The Killing of a Sacred Deer Movie Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

So a few years ago I saw a movie called The Lobster, a movie with a weird as hell premise that actually managed to have purpose in its weirdness instead of just revelling in it for no reason. Since then, The Lobster has become something of a cult classic, mostly for its weird premise but also for its unique approach to dialogue and unconventional character development. Since then, I've been curious to see what director Yorgos Lanthimos has in store, so I was really excited when I found out he was at the helm of this movie. Unlike The Lobster, where I was already totally aware of the strange premise beforehand, I knew literally nothing about this movie, and that's definitely the best way to watch it.

When it comes to camera work and cinematography, Lanthimos is definitely amongst Denis Villeneuve and Spike Jonze as one of the best directors working today. He shined with The Lobster but I feel it's with this movie that I got a true sense of his talent as a director. To say this movie takes its time would be an understatement, its patient and lingering with each shot, slowly and subtly shifting the camera in ways that he knows will bring the most possible anxiety out of the audience. And anxiety is a key player in terms of tone for this movie, as the characters anxiousness and tenseness ramps up, so does the audiences, the more paranoid and aggressive the leads get the more real the movie feels. Tonally, it's a step-up from The Lobster because where The Lobster always maintained its bizarre un-reality, Killing of a Sacred Deer takes its absurdist world and integrates it with familiarity, making it all the more surreal as - almost in spite of how insane his writing can be - it still feels real as you watch it.

Of course that is also a huge credit to this films writing, which is some seriously downright oscar-worthy stuff. The Lobster lost the award for best screenplay to Manchester by the Sea of all things so hopefully this year the academy will smarten up and give Lanthimos the recognition he deserves because everything he writes is some seriously brilliant stuff. There's something to be said about a writer who can write characters in a way that they come off as being incredibly blunt without it seeming like the writer is just bad at being subtle, but it's a whole different thing when it's multiple characters and their incredibly blunt way of speaking is just the way things are. The deadpan dark comedy in this movie is some of the most unnervingly funny writing I've seen all year, which is played perfectly against the films much darker, much more disturbing second act.

To say The Killing of a Sacred Deer is the most disturbing movie I've seen all year - and yes that includes Darren Aronofsky's mother! would be putting it mildly. What I like about disturbing movies like this is that there's nothing ostentatious about it all, when a movie like mother! is disturbing its because it's clearly trying to be, and as a side effect to the story telling. This movie doesn't throw shocking imagery in your face, but keeps you disturbed with its surreal filmmaking. So in other words, nothing about this movie will give you nightmares or force you to look away from the screen in horror - for the most part that is - but it is extremely unnerving and uncomfortable to watch.

Final Rating
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a near-perfect film, even if it is very much a niche appeal movie that I can't really recommend for everybody. It's well acted, well-directed, perfectly written, and beautifully filmed. If you're okay with watching something weird, unconventional, bizarre, unnerving, and downright disturbing, give Killing of a Sacred Deer a watch.