O Sacrifício do Cervo Sagrado

It's not "weird" just to be weird, It's trying to show us something discomforting, that conventional movies CAN'T.

While The Killing Of a Sacred Deer will be dismissed by the mainstream, for it's very unconventional acting, pacing, and plot, for other's it offers a discomforting conversation on the dark reality of nature and justice. You aren't supposed to ENJOY it, you are supposed to appreciate it.

The intentionally cold and flat reactions from it's characters will turn many off, but give insight into empathy and trust. The subtraction and skewing of emotion allows us to get a closer look at ourselves and our expectations for coping with threats and loss. It's maddening and incredibly uncomfortable to watch, but that is it's aim and success. You have to stop wanting the movie to be what you want it to be, and start wondering why it is the way it is, if you want to take something away from it.

While the movie doesn't meet it's impact potential by missing some opportunities for heavier moments and more character development, it is still fascinating, challenging, and rewarding for an open mind.

For people that appreciate brain teasers like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mulholland Drive, Borgman, Under The Skin, and Sleeping Beauty.

What a strange filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is. Had I not already seen "The Lobster" (2015) (and have since seen two of his earlier Greek productions), I probably would've been completely taken aback by this one, "The Killing of a Sacred Deer." Like its predecessor, its characters seem to occupy some alternate reality entirely dominated by egocentrism, deviant sex and magical retaliatory justice. Again, the acting is intentionally stilted, and there seem to be archaic literary references. I found the eye-for-an-eye pun of "The Lobster" amusing, but the source of Ancient-to-Classical Greek mythology here is quite a treat for me. At university, I took a class, not unlike the daughter in this movie, that included reading the play "Iphigenia in Aulis" by Euripides and, then, viewing the 1977 film adaptation "Iphigenia" directed by Mihalis Kakogiannis. Unfortunately, the result in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" is rather muddled.

In the Greek myth, King Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, at the behest of the goddess Artemis to allow him and his troops to proceed on the warpath to fight the Trojans. In some versions, Iphigenia is replaced by a deer, hence the title of this movie. The reason I don't think the effects work as well here as they did in "The Lobster" is because whereas that movie took human shortcomings to absurd extremes, this one takes what was already by modern standards an absurd myth and attempts to make it modern and more ordinary. Gods are dead and replaced by doctors, and if there is a god, apparently, he's a pockmarked teenager seeking revenge for his dead father. I suppose a surgeon's wife role playing during sex as a patient under general anesthesia and a father recalling to his son the time he masturbated his father is more in line with some of the sexual perversity one finds in some Classical Greek literature, though. Yet, overall, it comes across as disjointed. If this were supposed to be a psychological thriller, it seems difficult to lure the spectator in without being able to identify with the characters--whereas this was unnecessary in the black comedy of "The Lobster" (and contradictory to the intent of the Greek movies). But, the stilted acting and illogical premise of the narrative works against identification. I don't think any amount of tense scoring and camera movement from distant perspectives can alleviate that--in a world where nothing is sacred.

P.S. I still don't quite get the point of "Groundhog Day" (1993) as the film-within-the-film. Is it just because characters in both are prisoners of fate or something? I prefer the self-reflexivity of the director's prior "Dogtooth" (2009) and "Alps" (2011).

They have you terrified at what was going to come out of someones mouth in just about every scene. I dont know if I liked it or hated it. I appreciated they made Me squirm for a couple hours. But now I think I need to wash it down with like, i dont know, a disney movie lol or something. The people, every last one of them are seriously messed up in the head. Brace yourself to be pushed in the incredibly uncomfortable zone. Should have a warning, "written by some one with psycological issues"

Yorgos Lanthimos's latest film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is well-shot, adeptly acted, intensely written, and beautifully unsettling. An outstanding achievement by any metric. And I never want to see it again.

From the opening shot, the film wears its tone not only on its sleeve, but also on its chest, face, and everywhere else: Its gonna make you uncomfortable. From the haunting score that seems to creep its way into every scene, to the awkward and robotic characters, to the downright scary Martin (played excellently by Barry Keoghan), the movie feels 'off.' We've seen this "seemingly perfect upper- class family has a darkness that tears them apart" type story before, but never so viscerally displayed as it is here.

If the characters' inhuman mannerisms, conversations, and actions aren't unsettling enough, the film also delivers enough on-screen gross outs to hammer home a truly affecting experience. The film is objectively well-shot, and delivers a capable, if slightly subdued plot, while building to a frightening conclusion. It's not a horror movie sort of frightening either, but more of a, "I can't believe I'm about to watch this" feeling.

I know that's a tough sell. The Killing of a sacred Deer is not going to make you feel good. The film is filled with an overarching, all-consuming darkness that lingers even after it's over. Still, it's a truly unique and deeply affecting film that's worth watching, even if only once.

This poorly written and badly directed movie from Oscar nominee (for "The Favourite") Yorgos Lanthimos is yet another Emperor's New Clothes example of bad contemporary cinema. You can fool some of the people some of the time...

As often is the case during a bad movie, my mind started to wander and I thought about Ed Norton's breakthrough film "Primal Fear", a suspense thriller featuring a memorable war of wills with Richard Gere. In "Deer" we have Barry Keoghan reminding me of Norton, but giving a rote, clumsy performance. For director Yorgos, niceties like believable acting, believable characters and attempts to help the viewer suspend disbelief are way too cornball for him to attempt, instead substituting his tiresome Theater of the Absurd antics.

In contemporary porn, wedded to internet streaming as the mode of delivery, a set-up for a scene/video lasts a minute or two to establish some dumb stag movie type premise, and then it's on to the races for a half hour or so of nonstop explict sex action. In "Deer" Yorgos takes an hour, fully half of the movie to shaggy-dog build up his absurd supernatural premise, during which the cast walks through their roles like zombies.

Nonsensical second half, with its absurd violence and ridiculous sexual innuendo (Nicole Kidman's off-screen hand-job for example) traps the characters with zero degrees of freedom, making their actions subject to "fate" or some pretentious appeal to Euripedes and Greek myth. It's not interesting watching them go through the motions and none of the scenes are credible. Under the guise of avant-garde filmmaking, we get hackwork. Oh, for a great filmmaker like a Sidney Lumet (with scores of great movies about conflict and war of wills, my favorite perhaps not the Pacino classics but Sean Connery in "The Offence"), not the trendy hacks of today's cinema.