THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

the killing of a sacred deer (2017) movie

Genre              |   Thriller Horror

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   121 minutes

Released         |   16 November 2017

cast

Colin Farrell as Steven Murphy
Nicole Kidman as Anna Murphy
Alicia Silverstone as Martin's Mother
​Barry Keoghan as Martin

director

​Yorgos Lanthimos

writer

Yorgos Lanthimos ... (written by) and
Efthymis Filippou ... (written by)

cinematographer

​​Thimios Bakatakis ​

music

No credit

film editor

Yorgos Mavropsaridis

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box office result

Worldwide             $​2,291,901

Australia                 $ not reported

North America       $​2,291,901

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the best dialogue

Teacher: The boy is very good at math and physics. Kim is very good at literature and history. They're both a little restless, but they've never been rude to any of the staff.
[pause]
Steven Murphy: If you had to choose between them, which would you said is the best?

Steven Murphy: A surgeon never kills a patient. An anaesthesiologist can kill a patient, but a surgeon never can.

Martin: Can I have your MP3 player when you are dead?

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THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) MOVIE IMAGES

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) STORY SYNOPSIS

Dr. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a renowned cardiovascular surgeon presiding over a spotless household with his ophthalmologist wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and their two exemplary children, 12-year-old Bob (Sunny Suljic) and 14-year-old Kim (Raffey Cassidy). Lurking at the margins of his idyllic suburban existence is Martin (Barry Keoghan), a fatherless teen who Steven has covertly taken under his wing. As Martin begins insinuating himself into the family’s life in ever-more unsettling displays, the full scope of his intent becomes menacingly clear when he confronts Steven with a long-forgotten transgression that will shatter the Murphy family's domestic bliss.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 7 November 2017
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Where is the line between clever and improbable? That is the question viewers will ask after watching The Killer Of A Sacred Deer. Greek Director Yorgos Lanthimos has established himself as a filmmaker who is happy to leave narrative question marks in his movies, the result of which leads to people either filling the information in for themselves OR walking away with a sense that Lanthimos is being too clever for the sake of his movie. Either way, he seems to know how to get people talking and thinking about the tales he tells with his unique brand of cinema fantastique. It’s also led to a higher profile within the broader film community and now attracts the likes of Colin Farrell, starring in his second movie with Lanthimos, along with Nicole Kidman, who plays alongside the Irish actor in this new film. In terms of viewer reaction to The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Lanthimos has created something that’s just too downbeat to be considered enjoyable, but the imagery and circumstances he uses to tell the story demonstrate that he is maturing and genuinely thinking about how to harness the elements that make cinema unique in its power to evoke thought and emotion.

This new film is billed as a “Hitchcockian psychodrama”, but movie fans may feel like The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is more like the Director’s riff on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Lanthimos and Cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis make great effort to compose this new film in such a fashion that environment, through shot framing, becomes key to understanding the relationship dynamic between various characters throughout the course of the story. They create a real sense of individual isolation, even when the characters engage intimately with each other, and the physical distance between characters says as much about their relationship as any of the film’s dialogue. Central to this concept of isolation is Farrell’s Steven Murphy, a Cardiologist whose brilliance as a Surgeon is equaled only by the wafer thin veneer of humanity that holds beneath it a man who lacks emotional intelligence and the ability to relate with those around him, including his family and friends, in only the most perfunctory manner. Farrell’s delivery, while not laced with anywhere near the same degree of sarcasm, seems fashioned from a similar psychological wellspring as Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance. He looks like a human and sometimes he acts like a human, but beneath the surface of the humanity there is something that is not right and it leaves his mind open to all sorts of delusions. In the case of Jack Torrance, the supernatural,ancient evil of The Overlook Hotel was able to infiltrate those delusions and completely overwhelm his humanity. In the case of Steven, his success as a Cardiologist fuels a self-belief that nothing can be his fault. The viewer is presented with a man who’s so lacking in a “sense of the real” that the idea that something as terrible as a patient dying on the operating table is an event that can be explained away as “isolated” to the confines of the theatre where the tragedy occurred. This is a critical element in answering whether or not The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is a clever film about smart people who make poor choices OR a film about clever people who have no sense of understanding outside of their immediate frame of reference and, in a nod to the troubles that have led to a disintegration of his home country’s economic, political and social fabric, must bow to the “Occupy Wall Street” mentality, where a form of intellectual socialism and physical sacrifice is the price that must be paid for redemption.

Farrell’s Steven Murphy may be the most intelligent man in the room, but Lanthimos goes to effort to make sure the viewer understands that it doesn’t make him the smartest. The things that he says and does are cringe-worthy. Steven’s lack of understanding about the impact he has on others is an issue is an opportunity for Lanthimos and Co-screenwriter Efthymis Filippou to explore a problem that plagues current Western society. A lack of personal accountability, an overwhelming sense of individual “manifest destiny” and the belief that no subject off limits are themes that flow through the film’s narrative. This narrative, coupled with the use of the film’s settings, don’t necessarily make The Killing Of A Sacred Deer the most clever movie of 2017, but it’s Cinematic approach makes it one of the most interesting. The caveat that precludes it from being truly great is preposterous denouement. It will be up to viewers to decide whether the way in which the story plays out is consistent with its set-up or whether Lanthimos and Filippou “Jump the Shark” as all sense of “common sense” fly out the window when Steven Murphy makes the most important decision of his life.

Nowhere are Steven’s more obvious than in his dealings with Barry Keoghan’s Martin; the son of a man who died in theatre while the good Doctor was operating on him. At points throughout the story, Steven tries to wish away the death as an accident, as a mistake by the anesthesiologist (who happens to be a close personal friend) and just plain bad luck. In his attempts to help young Martin, Steven has taken to meeting him and providing him with the material possessions a father might give his son. His relationship with Martin is a reflection of entire life. Awkward, stilted, unrelatable. Everything is forced for the sake of appearance. The fact that Martin is just as awkward, stilted and unrelatable makes the acting between Farrell and Keoghan painful to watch throughout the film. At least in Martin’s case, the viewer understands that his “strangeness” stems from the psychological pain he has suffered with the death of his father. Likewise, the young man’s Mother, played by Alicia Silverstone, has drifted off into some kind of alternate reality where she has become convinced that Murphy’s relationship with Martin and his appearance at their home, is a sign that Steven is interested in pursuing a relationship with her. Only during a moment of desperate flight does Murphy even consider using the “I’m a married man” line to avert Martin’s Mother’s unwanted attention. 

The Murphy family may be an excuse for Steven to escape Martin’s Mother, but it’s no shining example of kith and kin. Nicole Kidman plays Anna, Steven’s wife and the very-definition of a walking contradiction. She caters to her husband’s every whim, including his sexual proclivities that involve her lying back naked on their bed, similar to one of Steven’s anesthetized patients, while he masturbates furiously; suggesting that the only thing capable of arousing him is some kind of bizarre replay of the events that unfolded that day in his operating theatre. Anna is a servant to her husband’s needs despite the fact she is a successful Ophthalmologist with her own practice. Anna’s success simply doesn’t register with Steven and he takes the opportunity throughout the story to belittle her profession and discount her medical opinions because she’s not “properly” qualified to provide a diagnosis. The Murphy’s daughter Kim, played by Raffey Cassidy, is much like her father. On the surface, she seems like a an average teenager, but there’s something unbalanced about her. While she’s not portrayed as a stereotypical brat, her desire to pursue her own agenda is maddening to watch. Despite all the signs that everything will end badly, Kim makes sure her needs are met above all others, including her little brother Bob, played by Sunny Suljic.

Bob is the antithesis of every other character in the movie. Reading into what his character represents is pretty simple. He is everything that is good about the world. He wants to help. He wants to please everyone. He feels his pain and that of others. The only one who genuinely cares for Bob is Anna. When illness befalls him, Anna is the one who takes action and pushes those around her to help bring her youngest child back to health. Lanthimos and Filippou err at this point, as they rely upon both gender and role stereotype, portraying Anna as Bob’s only genuine benefactor. This setup does lead to the film’s most emotionally charged scene, where Kidman’s Anna finally call time on her husband’s bullshit and delivers a stunning rebuke that is like a high-powered shot that pierces his mind and heart simultaneously and strips any remaining shred of hope that everything will turn out for the best. Unfortunately, this bolt of reality sees the movie veer into territory that is at odds with what the viewer will feel is within a character’s range; in this instance, Steven’s. To discover what is happening, Murphy takes matters into hand, but it seems completely at odds with what the viewer has learned about him throughout the course of the story. His actions are not inconceivable. They just seem very improbable, given the story that has unfolded.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) USEFUL LINKS

​The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) - IMDb
​The Killing of a Sacred Deer - Wikipedia
​The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes

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