You ever finish a movie and just sit there in the dark, staring at the credits, feeling like you need a long shower and maybe a therapist? That’s the Yorgos Lanthimos effect. Specifically, it's what happens after you watch The Killing of a Sacred Deer movie. It isn't just a psychological thriller. It’s a slow-motion car crash involving a cardiac surgeon, a creepy teenager with a plate of spaghetti, and a literal life-or-death ultimatum that feels like a Greek myth took a wrong turn into a modern sterile hospital.
The film stars Colin Farrell as Steven Murphy, a successful surgeon, and Nicole Kidman as his wife, Anna. They have a nice life. A big house. Talented kids. But then there’s Martin, played by Barry Keoghan in a performance that basically redefined "unsettling" for a whole generation of cinephiles. Martin’s presence in their lives starts as a weird charity project and ends as a supernatural reckoning. It's awkward. It’s clinical. Honestly, it’s one of the most uncomfortable things you’ll ever watch, and that is exactly why people are still obsessed with it years later.
The Myth Behind the Madness
To understand what's actually happening in The Killing of a Sacred Deer movie, you have to look at Euripides. Lanthimos isn't subtle about this, though he doesn't hit you over the head with a history book either. The story is a modern riff on Iphigenia in Aulis. In the original myth, King Agamemnon kills a sacred deer belonging to the goddess Artemis. To atone and get the winds blowing so his ships can sail to Troy, he’s told he has to sacrifice his own daughter.
Steven Murphy is our Agamemnon.
He’s a man of science who made a mistake on the operating table years prior while he had a few drinks in him. Martin is the "goddess" or the avatar of fate demanding payment. There is no logic to how Martin makes the kids lose the use of their legs. There’s no medical explanation for the bleeding eyes. It just happens because, in the world of this film, the universe demands a balance. If you take a life, you give a life. It’s cold. It’s brutal.
Why Everyone Talks Like a Robot
If you've watched the film, you noticed the dialogue. It's weird, right? Every character speaks in a flat, monotone delivery. They describe sexual fantasies or horrific medical procedures with the same emotional weight as someone reading a grocery list. This is a staple of Lanthimos’s style, often seen in The Lobster or Dogtooth.
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By stripping away the "acting"—the crying, the screaming, the typical Hollywood emotional cues—Lanthimos forces you to focus on the raw weight of the words. When Steven’s son, Bob, says he can’t feel his legs, he says it like he’s reporting a minor weather change. This creates a massive sense of dread. It makes the suburban setting feel alien. You realize these people have no emotional vocabulary to deal with the cosmic horror dropping into their living room.
Barry Keoghan and the Spaghetti Scene
We have to talk about the spaghetti. There is a specific scene where Martin is eating pasta while talking to Anna (Kidman). It is arguably the most famous moment in The Killing of a Sacred Deer movie. He’s shoving noodles into his mouth, sauce everywhere, talking about his father's death.
It’s disgusting. It’s captivating.
Keoghan plays Martin not as a villain with a cape, but as a force of nature that just is. He isn't "evil" in the traditional sense; he’s just the bill collector for the universe. The way he mimics Steven’s mannerisms and tries to insert himself into the family is deeply parasitic. Most movies would give the antagonist a big monologue explaining their plan. Martin doesn't need one. He just tells Steven the "rules" of the curse and waits. The waiting is the scariest part.
The Impossible Choice
The crux of the film is the ultimatum. Martin tells Steven that to stop his entire family from dying of a mysterious paralysis, Steven must choose one family member to kill. If he doesn't, they all die.
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What follows is a horrifying look at human selfishness.
Instead of the family banding together, they start competing for Steven’s favor. The kids try to be "extra good" so they aren't the ones chosen. Anna tries to appeal to Steven’s logic, even suggesting they can just "have another child" because they are still young enough. It’s a complete breakdown of the nuclear family unit. Lanthimos is poking fun at our supposed "civilized" values. When the chips are down, we’re all just animals trying to survive.
Technical Mastery and the "Great God Pan"
The cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis contributes to the feeling of being watched. The camera often sits high in the corners of hospital hallways, looking down like an indifferent god. Or it follows the characters with long, gliding tracking shots that feel predatory. The score is equally jarring—lots of high-pitched strings and discordant brass that makes your skin crawl even when nothing "scary" is happening on screen.
It’s a masterclass in tension. You keep waiting for a jump scare that never comes. Instead, you get a slow, agonizing realization that there is no way out. The ending—the "spin the bottle" scene with the shotgun—is one of the most stressful sequences in modern cinema. It’s random. It’s unfair. And in the context of the movie’s logic, it’s the only way Steven could make the choice without "choosing."
Common Misconceptions
A lot of people think the movie is a "medical thriller" or a "home invasion" flick. It’s neither. If you try to view it through the lens of realism, you’re going to hate it. You’ll ask questions like:
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- How did Martin make them paralyzed?
- Why didn't they just go to a different hospital?
- Why is everyone so calm?
The answer to all of those is: It’s a parable. In a parable, the "how" doesn't matter as much as the "why." Martin represents the inescapable nature of guilt. Steven thought he could drink, screw up, and move on with his wealthy life. The movie says "no." You don't get to move on until the debt is paid. It’s a very old-school, Old Testament kind of justice wrapped in a sterile, Cincinnati-based aesthetic.
How to Process This Movie
Watching The Killing of a Sacred Deer movie is an exercise in endurance. It’s meant to be polarizing. Some people find the deadpan humor hilarious—and honestly, there are some genuinely funny, awkward moments—while others find it pretentious or overly cruel.
The film challenges the idea that being a "good person" (a successful doctor, a provider) exempts you from the consequences of your darker moments. Steven isn't a monster, but he is arrogant. He thinks his status protects him from the messiness of death. By the end of the film, he’s literally crawling on the floor, broken.
Practical Steps for Your Next Rewatch
If you’re planning to dive back in, or if you’ve just finished it and your brain is fried, here is how to actually digest what you just saw:
- Read up on Agamemnon: Spend ten minutes on the Wikipedia page for Iphigenia in Aulis. It makes the ending of the film hit ten times harder when you see the direct parallels.
- Watch the body language: On a second watch, ignore the words. Look at how the characters stand. They are almost always physically distanced from each other, even when they are in the same room. It highlights the emotional vacuum they live in.
- Listen to the soundscape: Pay attention to the silence. Lanthimos uses silence as a weapon. The lack of ambient noise in the hospital makes the eventual outbursts of violence or music feel like a physical assault.
- Look for the deer motifs: There are subtle nods to the "sacred deer" throughout the film, from the way characters move to specific dialogue cues about hunting and animals.
This movie doesn't offer a "happy" ending or a neat resolution. It offers a reflection of a cold, mechanical universe where mistakes have a high price tag. It’s a film that stays with you, not because it’s fun, but because it feels fundamentally true in its harshness.
To get the most out of this experience, compare it to Lanthimos's other work like The Favourite or Poor Things. You'll see a pattern of him exploring power dynamics, but Sacred Deer remains his most clinical and perhaps his most haunting exploration of what happens when we lose control over our own lives. Use the "rule of three" to analyze the family's decline: the loss of legs, the loss of appetite, and the bleeding from the eyes. It’s a countdown to a finale that was written thousands of years ago in ancient Greece.