| The Killing of a Sacred Deer | |
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 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Yorgos Lanthimos |
| Written by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Thimios Bakatakis |
| Edited by | Yorgos Mavropsaridis |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Curzon Film |
Release dates |
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Running time | 121 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Language | English |
| Box office | $10.7 million[1] |
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a 2017absurdistpsychological horrorthrillerart film directed and co-produced byYorgos Lanthimos, who also co-wrote the screenplay withEfthimis Filippou. It starsColin Farrell,Nicole Kidman,Barry Keoghan,Raffey Cassidy,Sunny Suljic,Alicia Silverstone, andBill Camp. It follows a cardiacsurgeon who introduces his family to a teenage boy with a connection to his past, after which they mysteriously begin to fall ill.
The film had its world premiere at the70th Cannes Film Festival on 22 May 2017, where it was awardedBest Screenplay.[2] It was theatrically released in Ireland and the United Kingdom on 3 November 2017, byCurzon. 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). At the15th Irish Film & Television Awards, the film earned four nominations, with Keoghan winningBest Supporting Actor. It was nominated forBest Director,Best Screenwriter, andBest Actor (Farrell) at the30th European Film Awards, and forBest Supporting Male (Keoghan) andBest Cinematography at the33rd Independent Spirit Awards.
After performing anopen heart surgery, Steven Murphy, acardiothoracic surgeon in Cincinnati, goes to a diner where he meets 16-year-old Martin Lang, whose father died a few years earlier. Steven goes home to his wife Anna and their children Kim and Bob. Steven invites Martin to meet his family, and Martin gets along with everyone, especially Kim. That night, Martin invites Steven to his house for dinner the next day.
At Martin’s house, after dinner, Martin goes to bed, leaving Steven alone with his mother. Martin’s mother begins flirting with Steven and he leaves.
Martin visits Steven's office, complaining of chest pain, but tests show nothing wrong. Martin invites Steven over again, saying his mother finds Steven attractive, but Steven refuses. Afterward, Martin's demands for Steven's attention grow increasingly frequent and desperate. Steven is troubled to learn that Martin gave Kim a ride home on his motorcycle.
One morning, Steven's son Bob is unable to move his legs, so Steven and Anna rush him to the hospital, where numerous tests are performed. Martin tells Steven that, to "balance things" for his father, who died while Steven was operating on him, Steven must kill a member of his own family. Otherwise, within a few days, Steven's family will all die from paralysis, an inability to eat, and bleeding from the eyes. Steven has Martin escorted from the hospital. Later, Bob begins refusing to eat, but no cause can be found.
Kim, who has fallen in love with Martin, collapses while singing in the choir and is also hospitalized. She chokes on a piece of apple and is also unable to eat. Kim and Bob are given feeding tubes. Steven tells Anna of his history with Martin. He also admits to drinking before operating on Martin's father. Martin calls Kim with Anna watching and tells Kim to stand up and walk, which she does. When he hangs up, she collapses again. Anna confronts Martin about forcing her children to suffer. Martin replies it is justice to him since he believes Steven killed his father.
Kim and Bob are sent home. After Anna chastises Steven for his passive way of dealing with the situation, Steven ties Martin up in his basement. He beats Martin and shoots him in the leg, but Martin is not intimidated. Martin bites Steven's arm as well as his own arm to demonstrate his point. The children argue over whom their father will kill and try to curry his favor. Steven asks the school principal which of his children is "best," but he says it is impossible to point out the best.
Back home, Anna takes the children to see Martin, tends to his wounds, and kisses his feet, but she fails to elicit any sympathy. She then tells Steven that he should kill one of the children, not her, because she can have another child. Kim fails to persuade Martin to heal her so they can run away together and then tells Steven how much she loves her family and offers her life to save theirs. Finally, hopeless, Anna releases Martin.
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. Steven pulls a woolen hat over his face, spins around, and repeatedly fires a rifle. He narrowly misses Kim and Anna, but the third shot kills Bob.
Some time later, Martin, his face still somewhat bruised, enters the diner where he and Steven used to meet. The remaining Murphys are inside and promptly leave. Martin watches as they go. Steven avoids his gaze, Anna shoots him an icy glare, and Kim, who is healed and able to walk again, glances back before walking out of the door.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer takes its title from part of the story of the ancient Greek tragedyIphigenia in Aulis byEuripides.[3][4][5] On 11 May 2016, it was announced that Farrell was set to star in the film, with Lanthimos directing from a screenplay he wrote alongside Filippou.[6] This was the second collaboration between Lanthimos and Farrell, after 2015'sThe Lobster. Kidman was cast that June,[7] and Silverstone, Cassidy, Camp, Keoghan, and Suljic joined the project in August.[8] The film was financed byFilm4 and New Sparta Films along withthe Irish Film Board, and was developed byElement Pictures with support from Film4, whileHanWay Films served as worldwide sales agent.[2]
By 23 August 2016, the film had begunprincipal photography atThe Christ Hospital inCincinnati.[9] Shooting also took place in theHyde Park and Northside neighborhoods of the city.[10]
The Killing of a Sacred Deer premiered at the70th Cannes Film Festival on 22 May 2017,[11][12] where it competed for thePalme d'Or and wonBest Screenplay.[2][13] In May 2016,A24 acquired North American distribution rights,[14] and Haut et Court acquired French distribution rights to the film.[15] It was theatrically released in the United States on 20 October 2017,[16][17] and in Ireland and the United Kingdom on 3 November 2017.[18][19]
In North America,The Killing of a Sacred Deer made $114,585 from four theaters in its opening weekend, an average of $28,646 per venue.[20][21] It opened to £288,105 and finished on £857,615 in the United Kingdom.[22] The film ultimately grossed $2.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $8.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $10.7 million.[1]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 79% of 281 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.7/10. 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."[23]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[24]
Peter Bradshaw ofThe 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. It's an intriguing, disturbing, amusing twist on something which in many ways could be a conventional horror-thriller from the 1970s or 1980s, or even a bunny-boiler nightmare from the 90s."[25]Mark Kermode ofThe 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 anddeadpan humour" and "aSaw movie for thearthouse crowd, an increasingly sickening hunger game driven by an inflexible moral imperative, with a whiff of medical misadventure."[26]
A. O. Scott ofThe New York Times opined that "Lanthimos is less interested in moral shock therapy or social criticism than in aesthetic estrangement.Sacred Deer feels like a dark, opaque bit of folklore transplanted into an off-kilter modern setting."[27]Justin Chang of theLos Angeles Times called the film "a lightly blood-spattered but technically immaculate nightmare of a movie that invites us to cackle alongside its director into the void" and commented, "With a nastiness that seeps into the movie like a slow-acting poison, [Lanthimos] turns a domestic-medical nightmare into a feverish exercise in style."[28]
The Killing of a Sacred Deer was named "one of the best horror movies of the year" by Joey Keogh of Wicked Horror, who called it "horror in its purest, most distilled form, freed from the shackles of jump scares or exposition." 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 ofAwards 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 theOld 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 praiseddirector of photographyThimios Bakatakis and the "eerie" score. Bell summarized the film as "interesting, but a bit too ambiguous to remain as uncomfortably off-putting as it hopes".[31]
Trace Thurman gave the film a five-star review inBloody Disgusting, saying it would be "the most unsettling film you see this year" and giving particular credit to Lanthimos's direction and Bakatakis's cinematography, which he said give the film a "surreal, otherworldly quality". 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. He gives an eerie performance that you believe to be that of a psychopath".[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" ofThe Gift andThe Witch, both released in 2015. Seal added that the film plays out "mechanically" after the reveal in the middle and said the visuals were "striking at times" but became "monotonous and garish", before summing up the film as "the biggest bum note yet from one of the most overrated directors in the art-house world" and "an epic embarrassment".[33]
| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AACTA International Awards | 6 January 2018 | Best Supporting Actress | Nicole Kidman | Nominated | [34] |
| Cannes Film Festival | 26 May 2017 | Palme D'Or | Yorgos Lanthimos | Nominated | [35] |
| Best Screenplay Award | Yorgos Lanthimos andEfthimis Filippou | Won | |||
| European Film Awards | 10 December 2017 | Best European Actor | Colin Farrell | Nominated | [36] |
| Best European Director | Yorgos Lanthimos | Nominated | |||
| Best European Screenwriter | Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou | Nominated | |||
| Evening Standard British Film Awards | 8 February 2018 | Best Supporting Actor | Barry Keoghan | Nominated | [37] |
| Filmfest Hamburg | 14 October 2017 | Sichtwechsel Film Award | Yorgos Lanthimos | Nominated | [38] |
| Florida Film Critics Circle | 23 December 2017 | Best Supporting Actor | Barry Keoghan | Nominated | [39] [40] |
| Ghent International Film Festival | 20 October 2017 | Grand Prix – Best Film | Yorgos Lanthimos | Nominated | [41] |
| Independent Spirit Awards | 3 March 2018 | Best Supporting Male | Barry Keoghan | Nominated | [42] |
| Best Cinematography | Thimios Bakatakis | Nominated | |||
| London Film Critics Circle | January 28, 2018 | British/Irish Actor of the Year | Colin Farrell(also forThe Beguiled) | Nominated | [43] |
| Seattle Film Critics Society | 18 December 2017 | Best Supporting Actor | Barry Keoghan | Nominated | [44] |
| Villain of the Year | Barry Keoghan(as Martin) | Nominated | |||
| Sitges Film Festival | 14 October 2017 | Best Film | The Killing of a Sacred Deer | Nominated | [45] |
| José Luis Guarner Critics' Award | The Killing of a Sacred Deer | Won |
Films directed byYorgos Lanthimos | |
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