The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

(Netflix Streaming, August 2018) Confirmed and settled: I just don’t like writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos’ aesthetics. After being unimpressed at The Lobster and now all over again with The Killing of a Sacred Deer, I’m ready to give up entirely on his work. The premise of The Killing of a Sacred Deer is weird enough (a vengeful teenager puts a curse on a family, to be broken only through a violent choice), but it’s the execution that makes it exasperating: a deliberate blend of flat elocution, languid pacing (at two hours, the film is far too long), unlikable characters and deliberate emotional distance. It may work for some (the film was well reviewed), but I couldn’t wait until it was all over, not really caring about who lived or died. (No, actually that’s not true: at times I was actively rooting for everyone to die.) Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman seem game for the material, which to be fair to the actors is substantially different from anything else they may have been asked to play. Still, as far as I’m concerned, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a notable bore: interminable, uninvolving and unlikable.