The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Steven Murphy, a brilliant, successful surgeon, lives with his beautiful wife and two children in a luxury villa. He seems to lead a steady, peaceful life. But why does he spend his evenings with the odd teenager Martin, whom he gives fatherly advice? And why does Martin increasingly intrude upon Steven’s inconspicuously eccentric family? And what about the inexplicable tragic events that turn the Murphys’ life into a living hell? Yorgos Lanthimos, the key figure of the weird wave of Greek cinema, and his court screenwriter, Efthymis Filippou, have created a modern paraphrase of Ancient drama of irredeemable guilt and cruel punishment, a deranged meditation on the relation between the symbolic and the real. Precise acting, Thimios Bakatakis’s masterful cinematography, a dense, Trier-like atmosphere, an oppressively slow tempo, the breaking of taboos and delicate hints of black humour are the most salient traits of Lanthimos’s psychological thriller-horror film, in which the “eye for an eye, heart for a heart” principle holds sway. “Creating something that’s funny and horrific and tragic and violent all at the same time – going from one to another – that’s what I have been trying to do with most of my films,” the director said.