The two Lanthimos’ Greek language feature films that I saw disturbed me: Dogtooth and Alps. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is his most disturbing English speaking film and has more in common with Dogtooth than most would care to admit. I watched it soon after watching The Favourite and immediately after watching The Lobster and wondered if I had just exposed myself to too much of Lanthimos’ imagination and by chance, this movie happened to be the movie that I was watching when I reached my limit, or if there were no ideal circumstances to watch this film because it just wasn’t my cup of tea, which is not the same as it not being a good movie. It may be a great movie, but something about it grieved my spirit.
While watching The Lobster, I wondered why Lanthimos didn’t explore children’s functional role in society only to discover that he reserved his trenchant, absurdist eye for them in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I adored his puncturing the idea that children are innocent, protected, unconditionally loved hothouse flowers. They are kind of monsters. At their most benign, they sow seeds of discord, choose the parent most willing to fight for what they want, are mercilessly vicious with those who threaten their security regardless or perhaps especially when there is a relationship that normally should elicit some level of loyalty, sympathy or protectiveness and are shameless in their obvious attempts to curry favor and get what they want. If you want to know what ruthlessness is, look at a child. At their most powerless, children are reflections of their parents’ glory or downfall. Random stats are trotted out to impress people with the parents’ excellence. At their most powerful, they are gods wielding power with little to no wisdom—not that adults are any better, but they have some breaks and considerations when acting.
I instinctually knew that I would not like The Killing of a Sacred Deer after the first few scenes. I’m surprised that more people were not immediately suspicious of a doctor hanging out with a teenage boy and buying him presents, especially since his interactions with this child seemed furtive like a mistress, but Raffey Cassidy, who plays Martin, the child, is an amazing actor because I instinctually was suspicious of his dead eyed stare and slack expression. I completely did not recognize him as the doomed kid in the boat from Dunkirk. His reasoning level felt like a sinister child out of a Stephen King novel or The Twilight Zone. Not since The Children Act have I been so frustrated that an adult character could not discern the threat that a child posed and act appropriately. The doctor is oblivious for reasons that we learn later—a true lesson in being accountable as early as possible to ameliorate the damage when the sword of Damocles inevitably falls.
Once the doctor let him near those close to him, I simultaneously considered him another type of threat because teenage boys may still be children, but they also have the potential power to be as threatening as bad men. The doctor’s life was too perfect. He was the sun that the world orbited around. Whatever his reasons for interacting with this kid, he was wrong. Worst—he was in a Lanthimos movie, which already holds the potential for horror even when the mood is much lighter.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is unsettling for several reasons. It was like watching a horror movie without knowing the rules, and by the time that the rules were announced, it felt familiar. It is a movie loosely based on an ancient Greek tragedy called Iphigenia, but after I watched the movie and read a little bit about that tragedy, it reminded of two Bible stories: Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac and Jephthah and his daughter. It is a world in which reason and/or science seem to surrender quite willingly and with little resistance to the irrational. It is a world without real world consequences. No one is concerned when an older man hangs out with a kid, or when parents grab a kid dragging one’s self across the ground. The medical world ignores culpability or absolves itself of all responsibility when answers are not available. The idea that a medical institution would just hand over someone dying, shrug and essentially move on without a second thought is grotesque, but none of these scenes are fantastical. If people are lucky, they die in hospital waiting rooms instead of being turned away immediately, and the cops eagerly handed over a boy to a cannibal and sexual sadist.
If anything, Lanthimos’ world is ultimately more merciful when they surrender to chance instead of trying to objectively weigh loved ones’ worth. Ultimately he pulls punches in a way that real world families do not. Parents do play favorites. In order to preserve the unit or selfishness, families do cut weight by exiling members who don’t meet arbitrary standards or don’t help create the illusion of perfection. I did love that he really went there when the mom figures out what is up and essentially argues that she can have more kids.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is also a man’s world whether that man is the doctor or the dead-eyed teen. Once Nicole Kidman, who plays the ophthalmologist, wife and mother, takes center stage, for me, the movie became more dynamic. Neither the doctor nor the sullen boy notices the world. The boy is busy using the world like a giant dollhouse instead of genuinely interacting with it, and while the doctor is more benign, he lives similarly albeit his dollhouse is rooted in reality. Everyone exists for his pleasure because of what he can do as a provider and as a member of a respected profession, but once those roles are no longer fulfilling their function, the delusional aspects of his personality come into focus. He does not believe that he can make a mistake, which means that he thinks that he is perfect, thus he is insane. It is only through Kidman’s character interrogating these guys that we realize madmen are in charge of the world.
What makes The Killing of a Sacred Deer terrifying to me is how willingly women surrender their power to these men. Kidman’s character shows a perspicacity lacking in all the other characters yet ultimately she completely acknowledges, accepts and defers to the paradigm suggested by these men instead of further questioning and challenging it. She never shows the same symptoms as her children, but she accepts that it will happen instead of using it as evidence that there is some flaw in their reasoning. Her daughter is similar to her—she is unquestioningly and completely servile to the strongest guy in the room. Martin’s mother seemed more desperate than desirous of the doctor as if she is following Martin’s commands, not her desires then we never see her again. Before we knew with mathematical certainty of the fifty-two percent, Lanthimos pointed to them. They are smart enough to understand the system, but submit instead of rebel or reform. They are single-mindedly devoted to survival, not others.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer has much to recommend it in terms of camera movement, composition and framing, but I was much too absorbed by the story, its implications and its trajectory while also simultaneously checked out because I knew that we were headed for disaster, to focus on Lanthimos’ technical achievements. It may be a great movie, but I can hardly recommend or enjoy it. It is a world with no objective consequences to those directly responsible for harming others.