Review of The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) by John M — 15 Feb 2018

Unworldly. So this is about a successful surgeon (Colin Farrell). He is pretty well off for the most part. Things start to go south in his life when his relationship with a young man (Barry Keoghan) takes a turn for the sinister.

What is going on here, and how exactly do these two know each other? Now this is from director Yorgos Lanthimos who is an auteur known for getting weird. Out of his library, I've only seen The Lobster, and it is not something that I would consider myself to be a fan of.

It's really more of the same with The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and I have to say that I watched this weird little movie at bit of a distance. To the filmmaker's credit, he makes movies that feel like they don't take place on the Earth as we know it, but in some sort of alternate universe.

This does give his movies their own unique feel. The entire time you watch this, something feels... off. People aren't behaving normally, the dialogue is very stilted and everybody is speaking in declarative sentences.

Even the subject matter that people choose to make small talk over doesn't feel organic; there is this obsession with haircuts and wristwatches, and it feels weird to keep coming back to small topics that are this specific.

The most off-putting thing about this would have to be the performance given by Barry Keoghan. He's got this whole Ezra Miller thing going on for him, and I'm not talking about Justice League Ezra Miller, it's We Need to Talk About Kevin Ezra Miller.

I feel like there was a day and age where I would have really dug this. I do consider myself to be a big fan of director David Lynch, and to be fair, he isn't even making movies that are bizarre like this anymore.

I don't think I enjoy new movies like this to the same degree that I did when I was younger, but I suppose people do change. I liked the first half of this better than the second; when I had questions that needed to be answered, this kept me engaged, but then it was just too much of people being calmly aggressive.

The cinematography is quality with lots of wide shots, and there is an effective sound design and score to heighten the moment when the scene calls for it. If you consider yourself to be a part of the weird crowd, you can give this a try, but if you just take in traditional movies, you should probably go out of your way to avoid this.