This weekend I watched the movie The Killing of a Sacred Deer, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s a psychological thriller, with a plot that centers on the family of a wealthy surgeon, and how his cookie-cutter life is upturned when his teenage acquaintance begins to intrude in his life in very weird ways. At this point, if you haven’t seen the movie and you would like to, please stop reading! Spoilers ahead!
After I watched this movie, I immediately opened another tab and typed: “The Killing of a Sacred Deer explained” into the browser. I came across a great article, written by Bharat Swaminathan, the creator of thisisbarry.com. His article, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Ending Explained” is one of those things you read, and afterward, you say “Oh my god he’s right!”. Like most people who watched this movie, I couldn’t help but notice how mechanical, plain, and methodical all the character’s lives were. I thought to myself, this is very odd considering the movie is set in the modern-day where no normal person would interact this way. Bharat explains that the director’s previous movies, The Lobster especially, are similar in the way that the movie’s universe is not the same as our own. Although the characters are humans and their society seems to be the same as ours, the universe of The Killing of a Sacred Deer has its own set of rules and consequences.
In the past, Murphy (the main character) was an alcoholic and it bled into his job as a surgeon. One of those times caused the death of a patient due to Murphy’s negligence. That patient was the father of the teenage boy, Martin, whom Murphy befriends. The universe of The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a karmic universe. The cause of Murphy’s troubles and the introduction of Martin is directly caused by Murphy’s careless mistake. Even more, Murphy doesn’t take responsibility or own up to the fact that he caused the father’s death, instead, saying that he died in a car crash, or that most of the time the mistake is the fault of the anesthesiologist. His negligence and irresponsibility cause his family to suffer, and ultimately, one of the members of his family has to die.
This brings us to the next unusual aspect of the movie. Upon learning that Murphy must kill one of the members of his family so that the rest of them may live, he does not act shocked or surprised; instead, he is reserved and he seems to know already that this day would come. When he tells his wife, she does not advocate for her children and instead tells Murphy that they could always have another child, and she also tries to have sex with him. She does both these things for obvious selfish reasons, but also in order to maintain some normalcy in her life with Murphy. She wants him to see that his life is better with her and one of their kids rather than without her but with both of their kids. Any mother I know would have offered herself up in a heartbeat, and if any father I know were posed with this situation, they would sacrifice themselves. Therein lies the strangeness of the movie; it may look like a human, talk like a human, walk like a human, but there’s something that’s not quite there in all the characters of the movie.
All in all, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a pretty weird movie, but it’s the kind of movie you can watch again and again, while still having some unanswered questions no matter how many articles you look up explaining it. I included the answers to the things I had questions about, but if you would like to read more, I’ve included the link to the article written by Bharat Swaminathan! Happy watching!
https://www.thisisbarry.com/film/the-killing-of-a-sacred-deer-ending-explained/