Episode Details

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is artsy, cold, clinical, and touched on a disturbing theme that many will find difficult to deal with. This is subject matter that we have discussed on a few other movies we have reviewed as being deeply disturbing.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer Trailer

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The Killing of a Sacred Deer is, as far as I can tell, a modern-day retelling or rendition of the Greek tragedy of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, where Agamemnon accidentally kills a sacred deer and ends up offending the gods because of it. The goddess Artemis demands that he pay for the killing with blood from his own family as payment in what is called blood for blood.

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The interesting thing about this movie is that it takes a Greek tragedy, which I think we can all agree, seems distant and hard to relate to at best, and makes it relevant to today’s audience in a very real way. What’s even more interesting is that while they are making this hard to relate to Greek tragedy more relevant and easier to relate to, they simultaneously make the whole movie very cold and clinical. So it’s a bit of a mixture, making it more relatable and also harder to comprehend. Because it isn’t a literal retelling of the story of Agamemnon, it becomes a unique story of its own.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is, at its core, a psychological thriller. The acting is delivered in a way that makes you feel mildly alarmed because it’s so deadpan and void of real human expression. There is a bleakness that pervades the whole script, even the sets, camera angles, and framing are set up to invoke minimalism and clinical feelings.

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