20 Best Movie Performances Of 2017
15. Barry Keoghan - The Killing Of A Sacred Deer
Barry Keoghan may have made a name for himself this past summer playing sweet schoolboy George in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, but he completely one-upped this with his polar opposite performance in Yorgos Lanthimos' excellent black comedy.
Keoghan plays Martin, a young man whose father died on the operating table following a car accident, and holding the surgeon Steven (Colin Farrell) responsible, he places a curse on his family to "balance" his father's death out.
Keoghan's intentionally robotic, deliberate delivery is perfectly in line with Lanthimos' detached, almost otherworldly approach to human drama, creating an intensely creepy "antagonist", whose full motivations and abilities are kept unsettlingly ambiguous.
The simple act of eating a plate of spaghetti is made stomach-knottingly tense thanks to Keoghan's fantastically off-kilter work. This kid sure is going places.