The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Synopsis

“In ancient Greece, King Agamemnon learned this the hard way, invoking the wrath of the gods for killing one of Artemis’ beloved deer, for which he was obliged to sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigenia. The obvious lesson: Don’t kill deer. But what if the deed is already done? That’s the premise of Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest ruthless allegory The Killing of a Sacred Deer which has nothing at all to do with wildlife. (…)” (Peter Debruge, Variety) Yorgos Lanthimos’s taboo horror moves with a somnambulist’s certainty along its own distinctive spectrum of weird. It’s an intriguing, disturbing, amusing twist on something which in many ways could be a conventional horror-thriller from the 1970s or 1980s, or even a bunny-boiler nightmare from the 90s. There is a strident orchestral score, nightmarish fish-eye shooting angles, down low and up high, and people walking along corridors in such a way that makes forward movement feel like slo-mo falling.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)

Around The World in 14 Films 2017, presented by Jakob Augstein