10 Horror Movie Secrets They'll Never Tell You

Yorgos Lanthimos' fantastic psychological horror film The Killing of a Sacred Deer follows heart surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) who is effectively cursed by Martin (Barry Keoghan), the son of a man who died on his operating table.

Martin informs Steven that he needs to kill either his wife (Nicole Kidman), son (Sunny Suljic), or daughter (Raffey Cassidy) within a matter of days, or they'll all succumb to an illness that will make them eventually bleed from the eyes and die.

At the film's end, as his family's condition worsens, Martin finally gives in and indeed shoots his son dead, as lifts the curse and returns his remaining family to good health, just as Martin said it would.

But the film concludes without ever explaining how Martin is able to do this. We don't see any outwardly supernatural shenanigans throughout the film and there's no particular hint that Martin is anything but a flesh-and-blood human being. But with that in mind, how did it all happen?

Many might argue that considering the nature of the phenomenon is rather missing the point, but all the same, the curiosity is totally understandable.

If you try to unravel the story in a grounded manner, and consider that Martin might've been using biological agents to poison the family, you're going to lose yourself down a highly contrived rabbit hole.

It's only important that Martin has the power, and the awful dilemma this creates for Steven - that's the dramatic meat of the movie. Lanthimos clearly had no interest in exploring the practical mechanics of it otherwise.