10 Movies You Weren't Supposed To Understand
6. The Killing Of A Sacred Deer
Yorgos Lanthimos may be most famous for his award winning 2019 film The Favourite, but he also has a backlog of lesser known, strange and confusing movies, including The Killing Of A Sacred Deer.
If you couldn't tell from the flat-out reference made to it by the movie's title, the film is based on the Greek myth about King Agamemnon and his daughter Iphigenia.
In the flick, Steven Murphy is a doctor and father of two who starts a friendship with a young boy, Martin, whose father's death was caused by Steven. Steven had been drinking on the day that he performed surgery on Martin's dad, and because of this, there were complications and the man lost his life.
Martin tells Steven that to pay for what happened to his father, Steven must kill either his wife or one of his children, and if he doesn't, all three will die after suffering 3 stages of increasingly mysterious ailments.
While this storyline makes sense for a Greek myth revolving around a powerful Goddess, the film never tries to explain how Martin has the power to torture and kill Steven's family.
The mysterious "curse" that plagues his wife and kin is given no explanation and the audience is left confused as to how such a thing can happen. Although, the movie is a powerful story that is executed to perfection, the refusal to dive into the lore behind the gruesome fate that is bestowed upon the characters makes the movie too ambiguous for some.