Can you imagine if a teenage male figure is actually scary? After watching The Killing of a Sacred Deer, you might think ‘why don’t you have more horror films featuring teenage male antagonists?’
In this film, young actor Barry Keoghan (who also plays in Dunkirk) portrays Martin, a 16-year-old teenager who behaves horribly fond of revenge – even though director Yorgos Lanthimos never discloses how terrible the nature of this character is until the film is more than halfway. Games Online dan Offline
There is one thing more frightening than a horror story that shows the angry teenage boy who wants revenge: a ghost-haunted hospital. The problem is, The Killing of a Sacred Deer has these two elements. The film features a large hospital that looks expensive and clean, filled with world cardiac surgeons like Steven Murphy, who is played skillfully by Colin Farrell. These surgeons have power like God, but strangely a teenage boy knows many of Steven’s personal secrets and tries to feel it.
We cannot reveal more about the strange plot of the film, but in essence the comfortable life of Steven and his family – Nicole Kidman plays the role of Steven’s wife, named Anna, who also works as a doctor. His second life was destroyed by a pimply boy who held the principle of justice taken from ancient Greek mythology.
The film’s title is inspired by Euripides’s play script titled Iphigenia in Aulis. The story is about the ancient Greek warlord, Agamemnon, who accidentally killed a sacred deer belonging to the Goddess Artemis. To pay for his sin, Artemis asked the commander to sacrifice his own child. The figure of surgeon Colin Farrell – who probably never knew in his life the feeling of losing control – experienced the same dilemma before Martin.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is actually a horror film. So the elements of human behavior that are displayed are much darker – don’t expect that there is an eccentric element to the relationship of modern romance. The initial scene immediately displays human blood and it’s certain you will feel uncomfortable throughout the film when Farrell begins to slowly change from a charming figure to a scary one. Just like in real life, the boundary between these two personalities is very thin.
As a skilful director of building a gray atmosphere on the screen, Lanthimos maintains the tension of a two-hour horror film by unraveling the plot slowly. The camera movement is always done full of calculations in order to get the maximum effect.
Every element of this film is very calculated and intentional. The scripts, for example: Farrell, Kidman, and Keoghan must display a very cold and unfriendly dialogue. They don’t talk like normal humans.
Farrell and Kidman fit into their roles perfectly, imitating the cold and rigid attitudes of the American suburban elite. But their faces began to unravel when their perfect lives were interrupted by Martin’s very regulating presence.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer offers a strange, uncomfortable symbolism. This film has enough elements of traditional narrative to keep the viewer’s attention, but actually presents an atmosphere of tense ambiguity and may be designed to make Hollywood viewers who are accustomed to the film’s end clear to feel uncomfortable.