Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) - Yorgos Lanthimos      

       Imagine, if you will, let's say...a pizza maker who only eats leather shoes. Or, or, or a man murders a thousand people with an antique ship in a bottle and is rewarded with cacti. Or a die-hard Rick and Morty fan who has healthy human relationships. If these things sound absurd and utterly ridiculous to you, then you are only about halfway on the way to grasping Yorgos Lanthimos' newest movie, a mystery/thriller told by way of an absurdist Mony Python comedy, the succinctly named "The Killing of a Sacred Deer." Yes. That is really the title. The movie is tense and at times frightening, and at other times the goofiest thing I've seen in a while. It's like Park Chan-wook and Luis Buenel did messy hand stuff under the table at a dinner party and cleaned it up with a napkin and then that napkin got pregnant and had a baby that grew up to be the screenplay for this movie. Which, clearly means I liked it.

       None of this should come as surprising to those familiar with Lanthimos' previous work, including his first English speaking film, "The Lobster." That film was about a calmly dystopian future where single people were hunted down and turned into house pets. In his new film (once again starring Colin Farrell, who plays a Cincinnati, I think, surgeon who still has Farrell's own Irish accent. God, I love it when he does his real accent), Lanthimos and screenwriter Efthymis Filippou don't so much make a whole new world in this film, instead opting to show us our own, more relatable world in a sterilizingly unrelatable way. Everyone speaks in a forthright deadpan, an almost robotic-like Tommy Wisseau understanding of how humans speak. It's ridiculous and blunt and awkward and at times very funny. Colin Farrell is weirdly obsessed with metal wristwatch bands versus leather. "You have some hair under your arms. But not as much as my dad. He has three times as much hair at least. And on his back," two children comparing levels of puberty discuss.

       So, right, the plot, which, let me stress, is not very important, centers around Colin Farrell's surgeon and his strange, mysterious relationship with 16-year-old Martin. Their relationship is central to the main struggle of the plot, but suffice it to say, Martin's inclusion into Farrell and his family's life does not mean good news for any of the people involved (his wife, Nicole Kidman plays his wife with strange, coma-pretending-sex-having-zeal, or his kids, a choir-singing teen girl and a 12-year-old boy with hair too long). 

      From there the movie morphs into a strange morality tale where no one in the movie is particularly interested in being moral. It sure is fun and weird and odd, but it also makes the characters completely unsympathetic. It's an interesting dichotomy. The stranger they get the more awful they become, which makes it funnier, somehow making me feel more and less invested in the story at the same time. If this is a movie about parenthood, you definitely would not put it in the "How-To" section for any new parents. 

      The performances range from bizarre to great, but it's hard to gauge how well anyone is really acting with the strange, stilted dialogue. Kidman can go from benevolently wooden to cruel and snide to downright dead-eyed and creepy between scenes. Barry Keoghan plays the afflicted teenager, Martin, with a creeping disturb that teeters from invoking sympathy to full-blown fright. And for as strange as the whole movie plays, the third act of the film does a decent job of delivering on the movie's wacky fucking narrative. 

       This movie is strange and not completely together. The humor sometimes detracts from the tension, and vice versa. It doesn't quite tell a story about people I want to know or experience, but that is clearly part of its charm. I've never enjoyed seeing a full-grown man spinning in circles for so long. 

Grade: 4 Bleeding Eyeballs out of 7 metal watch bands.

Oh I forgot, but Alicia Silverstone is in this movie! Alicia Silverstone, you guys!!!