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The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) - 8/10
Its certainly a challenging film. It lives in metaphor wrapped in greek mythos and for a general viewing audience this is the kind of the film that would leave most people asking not only what did they watch but why. For those who enjoy a dense film riddled with layer upon layer of deep subtext you'll find this pretty rich.
Its a comedy blacker than midnight that skirts around into psychological horror at will.
Lanthimos other film i loved, The Lobster, is 70% comedy where this is maybe 20% or less though. Which is fine of course but if you're expecting something tonally similar this isnt it.
The acting (Leads are Colin Ferral, Nicole Kidman and Barry Keoghan,) is really excellent but like The Lobster its unconventional. The dialogue in delivery and writing is rigid. Like cardboard. Its unnatural and delivered in a way that feels false. Like we're spectators at an alien zoo trying to understand how these creatures interact with one another.
This falsness is deliberate though. The cinematography has the same wrongness about it. Everything is shot with the framing off. Characters faces oddly out of frame or off center in weird ways. The score often runs antagonistic to the scenes. All deliberate. The film using your cinema vocabulary to allow you to fill the gaps emotionally but also narratively.
All this comes together for a very weird retelling of a greek myth in a film that never holds your hand. If you like weird and darkly funny morality tales this is the kind of movie you can watch a multiple times, and you probably should.
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