50 Movies Where Evil Won

Plot: Cardiac surgeon Steven (Colin Farrell) meets a mysterious young man named Martin Lang (Barry Keoghan), whose father died when Steven was operating on him. In revenge, Martin curses Steven's family with an incurable disease and says that the only way to save them all is to murder one of them.

Some years before Saltburn, Barry Keoghan played another skin-crawlingly vile antagonist who successfully destroyed an innocent family. He really does have a knack for this sort of character, doesn't he? 

This strange and wonderful horror film from Yorgos Lanthimos, one of today's absolute kings of weird, is an excruciatingly uncomfortable watch in the best way. Watching Steven go through this hellish dilemma and seeing his family members trying to persuade him to kill one of the others... it's rough, to put it mildly. 

Steven desperately tries to find a way to save his family without sacrificing anyone, but no such luck. In the end, he places his wife (Nicole Kidman), daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy), and son Bob (Sunny Suljic) in a triangle, then blindfolds himself and spins around, firing a rifle randomly. Through this method, he eventually kills Bob. 

Lanthimos, who is Greek, drew on his country's rich theatrical heritage when crafting this film, as it takes inspiration from Greek Tragedy, specifically Iphigenia (in which a king must sacrifice his own daughter so that his fleet can go to war). The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a tragedy, all right, and a seriously messed-up one at that.