LFF 2017: The Killing Of A Sacred Deer

dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, UK / Ireland, 2017

Like Stanley Kubrick with a better sense of humour, Yorgos Lanthimos has sliced another clinically staged, deeply macabre piece of own-brand quirkery and served it up with a dollop of the blackest comedy you're likely to find this side of Michael Haneke. If you're not chuckling at a late scene in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer that portrays the kind of horrifically upsetting situation you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, then the Greek wizard of weird is probably not your glass of ouzo. For the rest of us twisted maniacs, though, it's heaven.

Colin Farrell reteams with Lanthimos after 2015's majestic The Lobster, playing a cardiologist with a murky past and a peculiar friendship with a gormless-looking teenager (Barry Keoghan, last seen bleeding out on a boat to Dunkirk). The relationship between these two characters becomes clearer and more disturbing as the film progresses, driving the plot remorselessly towards that aforementioned distressing - and distressingly hilarious - climax. To say much more would spoil the fun, but what transpires is, in essence, a home invasion / revenge thriller set at ninety degrees to reality; the kind of film that, if made by Hollywood, would have had Harrison Ford growling "my family" at regular intervals.

As with The Lobster, Lanthimos has his cast deliver their dialogue with the same deliberate, detached stiffness that openly signposts that what you're watching isn't real. Yet it draws so much attention to itself that you're forced to consider why it's there, which in turn has you examining everything else you see and hear in forensic detail. This technique worked wonders in the rich, satirical alternate universe of The Lobster, but there's not quite as much going on in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, and as a result it stretches itself out perhaps a little longer than necessary.

If the film has a theme, it's less easy to extract than The Lobster's was - perhaps it's about the internal self-repulsion of having a favourite child; maybe it's more to do with the horror of losing one in circumstances beyond your control. Or maybe it's highlighting the inherent absurdity of the eye-for-an-eye retribution that has fuelled so much human misery since the dawn of time. That's Lanthimos' gift: to tell such obscure stories that you're forced to examine the entire breadth of the human condition to find meaning. He doesn't seem to mind where you land with that, but in the knowledge that your findings will probably be deeply unpleasant, he at least lets you laugh at the crushing ridiculousness of it all.