Yorgos Lanthimos, and his new BFF Colin Farrell, return with another darkly humourous, beautifully shot oddball. Indeed, it's not a revenge thriller (although it does incorporate elements of that genre). I found that the flat, emotional suppression caused by the stilted delivery of lines (an ongoing stylistic choice of the director) meant that the motivation of characters was much harder to decipher than would normally be the case, and this (for me) detracted from the overall enjoyment of the film. The very, very black humour and the tension inherent within mundane situations pervade his films, and this is still evident (although the humour is turned down a bit while the tense mundanity is amped-up). This film had some superb shots (the overhead shot where Bob collapses after coming down an escalator with Anna is still firmly framed in my mind over a week after seeing it) and some darkly, gloriously, absurdist moments (Bob must eat cake!), but it definitely will not be for a lot of people, primarily because it doesn't have a standard 'Hollywood' narrative arc or pay-off and the delivery of dialogue is so odd to watchers. I overheard several teenagers in the cinema say "WTF was that shit??!!" at the end of the film, although I did notice that they stayed until the end and didn't talk, surf or fidget for the entire film so something must have grabbed their attention.I really liked Lanthimos' 2015 film, The Lobster, as well as his earlier Alps and Dogtooth. I'm not so sure about this though, considering it overall to be a glancing shot rather than a hit or a miss, although certainly not a bad way to spend two hours. I'd suggest to anyone who was intrigued by The Killing of a Sacred Deer (yup, it's a retelling of the story of Iphigenia) that they check out The Lobster and watch Lanthimos miss less and hit more.
Joseph Jones ● 3087d