The Killing of a Sacred Deer begins with a close-up of a beating human heart, exposed to delicate probing from a surgeon’s scalpel. I involuntarily flinched, but still couldn’t avert my eyes: it’s an image of stark provocation yet savagely compelling.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ film is an unsettling ride, a nightmarish portrait of some of the worst fears that can face a family played out as a suburban horror movie. It’s also darkly funny, impeccably acted, keenly moving and directed with assurance, precision and daring authority. You might want to look away from the terrible consequences of Lanthimos and co-screenwriter Efthymis Filippou’s scenario, but the film transfixes you like few others this year.
The scalpel belongs to Dr Steven Murphy, an Irish heart surgeon based in a Cincinnati hospital and played by Colin Farrell (even better here than he was in Lanthimos’ last film, the absurdist comedy The Lobster). Outwardly Steven is doing well: happily married to Anna (Nicole Kidman, on terrific form), with a teenage daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and younger child Bob (Sunny Suljic), all living comfortably in a big detached house in one of the city’s more affluent neighbourhoods.
Who is Martin, and what is his relationship to Steven? Is there a sexual aspect? Is blackmail involved?
But there are hints of trouble from the start. From the looming wide-angle shots that capture the action to the deadpan, slightly askew dialogue (a brilliantly droll exchange about wristwatches is one of the film’s running concerns), there’s an insinuating anxiety, a vague sense of threat underpinning The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
That unease takes human form when Martin appears, a young man whom Steven is in the habit of meeting privately. Brilliantly played with a mixture of insolence and guilelessness by Barry Keoghan, Martin has a strange hold over Steven. The doctor buys him a gift (a watch, naturally). He is strenuously polite to him, even when he turns up during his shift at the hospital. He invites him over for a family dinner (during which Kim develops a crush on the young man). Who is Martin, and what is his relationship to Steven? Is there a sexual aspect? Is blackmail involved?