Welcome to Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a movie that asks the question: “What if Greek tragedy was rebooted as a Kubrick knockoff starring people who sound like they’ve been drugged by their own blood pressure medication?” Strap in. Or don’t. The movie sure doesn’t care.
This film is cold. Not emotionally cold—clinically cold. Like being trapped inside an MRI machine while someone reads you a transcript of your family’s worst secrets in monotone. It’s so deadpan, even corpses in the morgue are like, “Lighten up, Steven.”
Let’s start with the basics: Colin Farrell plays Steven Murphy, a cardiovascular surgeon with the charisma of a damp carpet and the moral compass of a vending machine. Nicole Kidman is his wife, Anna, who speaks like she’s auditioning for a robot reboot of Eyes Wide Shut. They have two kids: a teenage daughter with a piano and puberty problem, and a son who looks like he’s been told Santa isn’t real and God is disappointed in him.
Enter Barry Keoghan as Martin—an orphaned teen who shows up like the ghost of moral reckoning past, present, and future. He’s got the unsettling aura of someone who owns too many knives but only uses them to butter toast. Steven once operated on Martin’s father, who died during surgery. Now Martin, in his weirdly polite, sociopathic way, is here to “balance the scales.” By what means, you ask? By cursing Steven’s family with a vague supernatural affliction that causes paralysis, refusal to eat, bleeding from the eyes, and—ultimately—death. Unless, of course, Steven sacrifices one of his own family members.
And that’s the plot. A man must kill a member of his own family, or all of them die slowly and mysteriously, like victims of a Greek god with a Netflix deal.
Now, you might think, “Wow, that sounds like it could be emotionally devastating.” It’s not. Because nobody has emotions. Everyone talks in the same eerily flat tone, like they’re reading bedtime stories to ghosts. Dialogue is delivered like an AI wrote it after studying transcripts of alien abductions.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
“Yes. That would be nice.”
“Your legs don’t work.”
“Yes. I noticed that.”
It’s like a competition to see who can sound the least human. And the winner is Barry Keoghan, who turns Martin into a masterclass in skin-crawling discomfort. He eats spaghetti like he’s never seen food before and delivers death threats the way you’d ask for extra napkins. He’s either brilliant or legally not allowed near playgrounds.
The cinematography is Kubrick 101. Wide-angle lenses. Symmetrical compositions. Long tracking shots down sterile hospital corridors. It’s pretty, in that antiseptic, “I’m about to be murdered by a very polite nurse” sort of way. But it’s all form, no heartbeat. Every frame feels like it’s holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
The pacing? Glacial. Entire scenes are dedicated to characters doing absolutely nothing. Colin Farrell shaves. Nicole Kidman brushes her hair. Someone slowly walks through a hallway. And you, the viewer, begin to question your life choices. Is this art? Or is this just cinematic hostage-taking?
And let’s talk about the film’s idea of suspense. It’s not suspenseful in the Hitchcock sense. It’s suspenseful in the “you’re stuck in a doctor’s office and the receptionist is judging your insurance” kind of way. You keep waiting for the tension to break. It doesn’t. It just lingers like a fart in a mausoleum.
Then comes the ethical dilemma: Steven has to choose which of his family members to kill. You’d expect tears. Screaming. Breakdown. Instead, we get a family meeting where everyone pitches themselves like they’re on a twisted episode of Shark Tank. The son’s like, “I could be a good surgeon like you, Dad.” The daughter offers to sacrifice herself in the name of adolescent melodrama. Nicole Kidman basically goes full Machiavelli and suggests maybe the son isn’t pulling his weight. It’s not tragedy—it’s Survivor: Suburban Nightmare.
And the big climax? Steven blindfolds himself, spins in a circle with a rifle, and fires randomly at his family like a dollar store version of Russian roulette. This is what passes for emotional resolution in the Lanthimos cinematic universe: unearned catharsis via blind homicide. There are duck hunting videos with more soul.
If there’s a metaphor here—and there is, because Lanthimos movies are nothing if not metaphor soup—it’s something about guilt, retribution, the impotence of modern masculinity, and the hollow rituals of upper-class detachment. Or maybe it’s just about how parenting sucks and hospitals are creepy. Either way, the message is buried under so much stylistic affectation it might as well be written in Latin and projected onto a wall of fog.
The music, when it appears, is less “score” and more “sonic assault.” Strings screech, drums pound, and you feel like someone’s trying to summon a demon in the projection booth. Combined with the constant emotional flatlining, it creates a vibe that can best be described as “anxiety migraine at a haunted IKEA.”
And yet, critics loved it. Cannes gave it Best Screenplay. A24 whispered sweet nothings into its cold, lifeless ear. Everyone called it “haunting” and “metaphysical.” But here’s the thing: just because a film is bleak and slow and full of dead-eyed stares doesn’t make it profound. Sometimes it just means you’ve been tricked into watching a metaphorical Greek tragedy shot like a bloodless horror film and acted out by mannequins.
Final Verdict?
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a film that dares to ask, “What if you could combine moral philosophy, supernatural curses, and absolutely no emotional payoff?” It’s a high-concept art film wearing a horror mask, but the only thing scary is how many people convinced themselves it’s deep.
Watch it if you enjoy staring contests with grief, or if you want to feel like a morally compromised ghost watching other ghosts navigate the world’s most uncomfortable potluck. Everyone else? Watch Hereditary. At least that movie knows how to cry.
