The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a 2017 absurdist psychological horror thriller film directed and co-produced by Yorgos Lanthimos, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Efthimis Filippou.
It stars Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, and Bill Camp.
It grossed $10.7 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, who praised Lanthimos' direction, the screenplay, cinematography, and performances of the cast (particularly those of Keoghan, Farrell, and Kidman).
After performing an open heart surgery, Steven Murphy, a cardiothoracic surgeon in Cincinnati, meets 16-year-old Martin Lang, whose father died a few years earlier, in a diner.
When Bob begins bleeding from his eyes, which Martin said would happen a few hours before death, Steven places him, Kim, and Anna in a circle, bound with duct tape, and covers their heads.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer takes its title from part of the story of the ancient Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides.
The website's consensus reads: "The Killing of a Sacred Deer continues director Yorgos Lanthimos' stubbornly idiosyncratic streak — and demonstrates again that his is a talent not to be ignored.
[24] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, writing that "The Killing of a Sacred Deer moves with a somnambulist's certainty along its own distinctive spectrum of weird.
"[25] Mark Kermode of The Observer also gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a typically arch dramatic conundrum, laced with Lanthimos's trademark off-kilter artifice and deadpan humour" and "a Saw movie for the arthouse crowd, an increasingly sickening hunger game driven by an inflexible moral imperative, with a whiff of medical misadventure.
"[26] A. O. Scott of The New York Times opined that "Lanthimos is less interested in moral shock therapy or social criticism than in aesthetic estrangement.
Keogh wrote that Keoghan is the film's "ace card", giving "his best, most self-assured performance to date" as Martin, the "supremely frightening yet weirdly charismatic creation who makes even the act of eating spaghetti seem terrifying.
"[29] Zhuo-Ning Su of Awards Daily wrote that the film is "less complex than [Lanthimos's] previous work but engrosses and unsettles all the same", adding that it "palpably improves" in its second hour.
While praising the cast, particularly Kidman, Su added that Keoghan "shines brightest as the plain but charismatic boy who's somehow not quite right", calling his performance "vivid" and "fully realised".
[30] In a mixed review, Nicholas Bell of ION Cinema wrote that the "mysterious, highly metaphorical" film, which he compared to "something from the Old Testament", "finds the director getting a bit too hung up on his own idiosyncrasies."
He also criticized Lanthimos's and Filippou's "overtly precise dialogue", which he felt "straitjacketed" the actors, but he praised director of photography Thimios Bakatakis and the "eerie" score.
Thurman also praised the cast, writing that Farrell and Kidman "deliver their lines with a stilted coldness that sends chills up the spine", and calling the younger actors "equally impressive, with Keoghan being the standout.
[32] Also writing for Bloody Disgusting, Benedict Seal gave the film a one-star review, stating that it had "none of the escalating intrigue and tension" of The Gift and The Witch, both released in 2015.