10 Opening Movie Scenes That Wanted To Make You Uncomfortable
7. The Killing Of A Sacred Deer
Yorgos Lanthimos' expertly crafted thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer revolves around a cardiac surgeon, Steven (Colin Farrell), who befriends a teenage boy, Martin (Barry Keoghan), with an unexpected connection to his past.
And in typically left-field fashion, Lanthimos opens his film by immediately establishing Steven's line of work in the most discomforting and confronting way imaginable.
The first shot of the film is a close-up glimpse of a beating human heart in the middle of surgery, as Lanthimos' camera slowly glides upwards while surgeons continue the operation.
After what feels like an eternity - in reality it's about 90 seconds - the shot finally ends, and the movie's title appears.
As human beings with beating hearts, we all have an innate biological aversion to seeing our insides on the outside, and Lanthimos exploits this fact so perfectly.
And if you at least soothed yourself with the belief that Lanthimos simply used an incredibly lifelike prop to execute the scene, during an appearance on Hot Ones Colin Farrell confirmed that Lanthimos actually filmed a real quadruple bypass.
More to the point, Farrell himself was also in attendance, and called the experience of watching the surgery "very intense" and "upsetting."