Last week I watched a movie called The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I had been meaning to watch it for a while and saw the trailer, and it looked really good. I also love A24 movies and this one is an A24 film. It reminded me of this previous movie I watched that was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos called The Lobster. For those who haven’t seen it yet, The Lobster is about a dystopian society where single people need to find a partner within a specific period of time or else be turned into an animal of their choice. It’s really bleak and sad but it made a really good social commentary about how society has stigmatized being single. In The Lobster, Colin Farrell stars as the main character, who needs to find a companion before he gets turned into an animal. I really wanted to watch The Killing of a Sacred Deer because a week ago I watched The Banshees of Inishirin, which stars the same actors Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan, and I really loved their acting in The Banshees of Inishirin so I was excited to find out they were in a previous movie together.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is disturbing, but the acting was incredible and I really loved the music score. The music score gives the movie its intensity. The movie is about a cardiologist named Steven who performs open-heart surgery at the beginning of the movie. Word of advice: if you are not squeamish, keep your eyes open. If you are, keep them closed for the first minute of the movie. To be honest, I closed my eyes at first but then somehow I opened them and was able to stomach watching the surgery. It was hard to watch, but then again, many people have had to get open heart surgery so this probably won’t be the last time I see a movie with an open-heart surgery scene or have to even witness an open-heart surgery myself in real life. Over the course of the movie, Steven gets to know a teenage boy named Martin, whose father died while Steven was performing heart surgery on him, but he realizes that Martin’s behavior towards him and the family is off and as the movie progresses it becomes clear that Martin is out to avenge his father’s death. At first he gives nice gifts to Steven’s children, Bob and Kim, and has casual conversations with them. He even invites Steven over to meet his mom, but soon Steven realizes that Martin and his mom lack boundaries. This is seen when Steven is at Martin and his mom’s house, and they are watching Groundhog Day. Even though Steven insists he needs to go home to his family because it is getting late, Martin and his mother insist on him staying to watch the movie with them. When Martin goes into his bedroom, Steven and Martin’s mother are alone, and Martin’s mother comments on how smooth and beautiful Steven’s hands look, and then she suddenly grabs his hands and starts touching them inappropriately. He leaves and even though Martin’s mother wants him to stay, Steven abruptly leaves because Martin’s mother crossed the line by initiating that kind of inappropriate contact.
Martin shows up unexpectedly to Steven’s office and tells Steven he has a pain in his heart, and that it’s the same heart pain that his father suffered with before he died during surgery. He is very upfront with Steven about his father’s death, that his father’s life could have been saved during the surgery because he was healthy, but that Steven didn’t save him. He says all this in a very calm collected tone, which I think is what makes the film so disturbing to watch. None of the characters in the film, except for Steven, who loses his shit rightfully so because his family is falling apart all because one kid is getting revenge on all of them, show much emotion. It’s like they are hypnotized to be numb and not show emotion. This is how viewing The Lobster felt for me. The characters show little to no emotion and they pretty much resign themselves to their fate and are really depressed and emotionally numb, even when the people around them are suffering. It was also pretty scary to watch Kim and Bob suffer the symptoms Martin told Steven they would suffer because Steven killed Martin’s dad in the surgery. Kim and Bob lose mobility in their legs, they lose their appetites and they bleed from their eyes. (I thought the bleeding was going to be gratuitous blood, but it wasn’t super scary. Then again, we all have different levels of comfort. I may not be able to stand supernatural horror film levels of blood but somehow I could stand this movie) When Anna, Steven’s wife, tries to give Bob something to eat (a donut) at the hospital, Bob refuses it and Steven, who is freaking out about what is happening to his son, tries to force Bob to eat the donut, but because Bob is experiencing the symptom of losing his appetite, he spits it out and complains he isn’t hungry. Because they lost mobility in their limbs, Kim and Bob have to crawl on their stomachs through the house on their elbows. At the hospital, when Steven tries to lift Bob and get him to stand up, Bob collapses again, and Steven threatens him and tells him to cut out all his nonsense, but Bob insists that he is not playing around and that he literally cannot stand up on his own because he is paralyzed in his limbs.
The music was pretty nerve-wracking because it sounded like a helicopter crashing overhead and it kept getting louder and softer, softer and louder, and each time it built my heart raced because it was building up to one disturbing scene after the next. I also thought about the theme of revenge and forgiveness. Martin had such a rough time after his father died, and so I can see why he found it incredibly hard to forgive Steven for what he did. But also Steven’s family suffered immensely and it’s like Martin was bringing up in the family all these deeply held insecurities that they wanted to keep hidden under their perfect suburban family life. When he meets with Steven, Martin tells him he needs to sacrifice one of his family members or else the kids will be cursed with the symptoms of paralysis, loss of appetite, eyes bleeding and death. He delivered it pretty quickly to Steven, and of course Steven is thinking, This kid is nuts, but as the movie continues it becomes clear how Martin is pretty dead serious about getting revenge on Steven’s family.
To be honest, this reached my threshold of scary. I don’t normally watch scary movies, and the only ones I have seen are Get Out and It Comes at Night, yet for some reason I could sit through this movie and not have to close my eyes multiple times. I closed my eyes during a few scenes but for the most part I felt more disturbed and depressed than jumpy and excited, which I would feel after watching a scary movie that involved things like killer clowns, possessed dolls/ children or exorcisms (which is why I steer clear of those films because I don’t want nightmares.) I don’t typically watch scary stuff because I don’t enjoy jump scares, but there weren’t any jump scares in this movie, just a slowly building suspense and disturbing story. I think that’s why it’s so scary and why it was so scary for me to watch. I had a rehearsal to go to after watching the movie, and it was a pretty heavy movie so it sat with me and I ended up not talking and just being quiet for the next thirty minutes while I drove to the rehearsal because I couldn’t stop thinking about how disturbing the movie was. But honestly, what I loved most was the visuals and the acting. The way the camera focuses in and out was somehow very masterful and unique. It was the same camera focus I saw in The Lobster and somehow it just really appealed to me as I was watching the film. Also I really loved Barry Keoghan and Colin Firth’s acting. It’s really cool that they starred in The Banshees of Inishirin together.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer. 2017. Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content, some graphic nudity and language.
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