Bleak Cinema Presents The Killing of a Sacred Deer

A suburban family is disrupted by a mysterious outsider, who tasks the family’s patriarch with a fateful ultimatum.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer brings the inevitability of Greek tragedy to the tepid living rooms of Cincinnati. As keenly awkward as any Yorgos Lanthimos film, Sacred Deer foregrounds the artificiality of the nuclear family and utter bizarreness of human behavior.  The horror of the film lies not in dark corridors or blood-splattered windows but in pristine interiors of muted colors and saturated feeling. Likely Lanthimos’ most challenging work, Sacred Deer carves out of marble and plastic a bedlam of emotional paralysis.