After the untimely death of 16-year-old Martin's father on the operating table, little by little, a deep and empathetic bond begins to form between him and the respected cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr Steven Murphy. At first, expensive gifts and then an invitation for dinner will soon earn the orphaned teenager the approval of Dr Steven's perfect family, even though right from the start, a vague, yet unnerving feeling overshadows Martin's honest intent. And then, unexpectedly, the idyllic family is smitten by a fierce and pitiless punishment, while at the same time, everything will start falling apart as the innocents have to suffer. In the end, as the sins of one burden the entire family, only an unimaginable and unendurable decision that demands a pure sacrifice can purge the soul. But to find catharsis, one must first admit the sin.
Performances are solid all round, but the standout is Irish actor Keoghan. Shy and lonely one moment, utterly blood-chilling the next, he's a mesmerizing presence on this screen of menace.
Stanley Kubrick and Carl Theodor Dreyer invade the margins of the strange world of moral and sexual promiscuities, so dear to Yorgos Lanthimos. [Full Review in Spanish]
No matter your final decision on the heart-stopping, nerve-shredding, gut-clenching The Killing of a Sacred Deer, one thing is for sure - you won't forget it in a hurry.
Lanthimos' greatest strength as a writer (along with his frequent collaborator Efthymis Fillippou) and director is his ability to elicit laughter from distressing situations, and there are a handful of such scenes here permeating with suffocating dread.
An amazingly weird assemblage of notions from Greek mythology and concepts from pessimistic geniuses like Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and Michael Haneke, the film creates something akin to a dreadful dream.
It's less a film about crime and punishment than an occasion for Lanthimos to cycle through the idiosyncratic set of perversities that first grabbed our attention but has been growing staler with each picture.
