With films like Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos became too one of the most exciting and at the same time strangest directing voices in today’s film landscape.
Arguably his best work The Killing of a Sacred Deer airs tonight at 10pm on ONE. That artfully twisted thriller drama with Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman unfolds a strange story that becomes more and more gripping and escalates in a real shock finale.
Watch a German trailer for The Killing of a Sacred Deer here:
The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Trailer (German) HD
At some point, thriller hit The Killing of a Sacred Deer is almost unbearable
In the film’s plot, Farrell plays Steven, a heart surgeon who is visited by the 16-year-old son of a patient who died in surgery. Martin (Barry Keoghan) hires the father of two teenage children bizarre ultimatum: Steven must kill a member of his family or everyone but himself will be paralyzed from the abdomen down, refuse to eat, bleed from his eyes and die.
In the first half, The Killing of a Sacred Deer fascinates and confuses with the typical Lanthimos style and perfectly composed images. People may look like people, but they behave like insensate robots in a world more like an enigmatic block of ice.
After diving into this once again unique Lanthimos universe, the film changes at the latest in the second half to deal with the topics Crime and Punishment and the urge for justice and revenge.
With a brilliant sense of horror that makes its way from the outside to the inside of the characters and brings everyone involved together inevitable escalation headed for, Lanthimos reveals the intact nature of Steven’s family.
At the latest the last third of The Killing of a Sacred Deer comes with one shocking intensity hence. Every single scene has an uncertain outcome.
© Alamode Film
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
In addition to bizarre and unforgettable details like the presumably most memorable spaghetti scene since Harmony Korine’s Gummo or the “sex life” of Steven and his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman), the final highlight of Lanthimo’s film is an absolute punch to the pit of the stomach.
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Have you seen The Killing of a Sacred Deer or do you still want to see the film?