The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2017 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A surgeon is faced with a dilemma when a teenager he's befriended starts to get creepy.

Yorgos Lanthimos, it seems, can only make one type of movie, and if you've seen Dogtooth or The Lobster, you know what you're getting into with The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The dialogue is stiff, lifeless; the storytelling is enigmatic; the mood is cold, almost sterile. The aforementioned earlier films (I'm not talking about Alps, by the way, because I don't really remember it) are a little more otherworldly. They only sort of feel like they can take place in our world. This one is firmly in our world though with a bit of something like magical realism. There are odd moments, and in typical Lanthimos fashion, they go unexplained.

Something unexplained--the symbolism of French fries. When you see this movie, let's have a discussion about those French fries. I didn't get it.

The narrative is about as straightforward as it gets, ironically. You could tell somebody the story of the movie and describe the characters and fool them into thinking it's a typical psychological drama. I struggled with what the movie was saying thematically. Maybe we can talk about that, too, after we talk about the French fries. I'm also not up on my Greek drama and only vaguely remember what this whole "sacred deer" thing is all about, but I'm not sure that's all that important.

What might surprise a lot of people is that this is a comedy. It's an extremely dark comedy, but it's a comedy. The dialogue's got a lot of little gems, delivered deadpan by the actors. Lanthimos's comedic dialogue has this way of making every single actor seem like a straight-man looking for a banana-man. There aren't punchlines, just phrasings and collections of words that would make you chuckle if you weren't a little creeped out by how god-damn stiff everything was. Colin Farrell and his beard show no emotion even though you know he's filled with emotion. He doesn't even really show much emotion when he's angrily telling his son that he's going to shave his head and make him eat his hair. Nicole Kidman sometimes reminds me of a statue on-screen anyway, so she fits right into Lanthimos's world, stoically delivering lines about making mashed potatoes even though the couple's kids are dying. I'm also pleased that she's still not afraid to get naked at her age. The kids are both fine, but it's really Barry Keoghan who shines the most as Martin, the creepy kid. His performance is haunting, and if you insist on calling him the villain of the movie, he's a very good one.

There really aren't a lot of other characters in this. There are some who float around the hospital. Martin's got a mom, the dad's got a buddy who's an anesthesiologist. I think that's about it. That probably adds to the uneasy vibe.

Oh, and the score! Ligeti made it in here, probably making it seem that much more like a lost Kubrick movie with a little more humor. Oh, hell, we know The Shining had its funny moments, too. There are times when this was almost visual plagiarism, and the Ligeti sealed it. Maybe Kidman disrobing helped with that, too.

Watches and watchbands, hair of both the head and armpit variety, and the allusions to French fries. If it means nothing, the film still works as a character study of a guy in an impossibly bleak situation. And, as I said, a very grim and almost impossibly tense psychological drama. I'll tell you this--the guy knows how to grab you with an opening scene, and he knows how to leave you confused with an enigmatic final scene. It's well worth checking out if you liked Lanthimos's other movies.

This is the second theater experience this year in which a stranger has felt the need to tell me that she didn't understand the movie.