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Revenge of the Spurred

"The Killing of a Sacred Deer", the latest from writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos ("The Lobster"), is a puzzling morality play: if you were forced to make a choice where none of the options are bearable, how would you choose? Lanthimos sets up his characters and watches them play out this conundrum, and the results are peculiar, thought-provoking, and unsettling in a way that goes bone deep.

Steven (Colin Farrell, "The Lobster") is a heart surgeon with a seemingly-perfect life: he's got a beautiful wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies) with whom he shares a serene home life with daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy, "Tomorrowland") and son Bob (Sunny Suljic, "The Unspoken"). He appreciates the finer things in life: we meet him as he's pacing down the hall at the hospital, immersed in conversation with a colleague about expensive watches. But there's a glitch in Steven's life.

He's got a peculiar relationship with Martin (Barry Keoghan, "Dunkirk"), a teenager who seems to have fixated on Steven. Martin regularly pushes past Steven's personal and professional boundaries, showing up at the hospital unannounced and angling for an invitation to a family dinner. We learn that Martin's father died after an unsuccessful surgery, and he holds Steven responsible. Despite dodging that responsibility - "An anesthesiologist can kill a patient, but a surgeon never can" - Steven certainly acts like the guilty party, buying Martin expensive gifts, acceding to his whims, and bending his schedule whenever Martin wants them to meet.

But Steven begins to chafe under Martin's quietly-voiced demands, and the teen ups the ante: Steven's family members will be afflicted by a mysterious onset of paralysis that will eventually prove fatal, and the only way to stop it is for Steven to choose one of the three to kill. This is Martin's way of enacting revenge for the loss of his father, though he puts it in more philosophical terms, framing it as a balancing of the books: "It's the only thing I can think of that's close to justice."

The film wisely dodges the compulsion to explain the mechanics, so we never learn how Martin sets his curse in motion; we only see the immediate effects as first Bob and then Kim succumb to the paralysis. Soon they're bedridden, and their anxious parents struggle to cope with their circumstances while each wrangles their own set of apprehensions: Anna must also worry about when the disease will claim her, and Steven ponders with dread the choice that's ahead of him. And that choice does indeed become dreadful, as do the increasingly aberrant, decidedly antisocial circumstances leading up to the film's denouement.

Mr. Lanthimos takes a deliberately bloodless approach to this material: his characters speak matter-of-factly in short, declarative sentences, and tempers rarely flare despite the awful tension of the circumstances. The lack of focus on character development and emotional life foregrounds the situation itself, allowing viewers to ruminate on how they might approach such an impossible conundrum. It's a pointedly provocative tack that won't sit well with everyone. But fans of avant garde cinema will be intrigued, and those who are willing to ponder weighty moral questions will find value here as well.

Mr. Farrell and Ms. Kidman, reuniting after this year's "The Beguiled," continue to work well together. Both adapt easily to Mr. Lanthimos's staccato script, and they foray bravely into uncomfortable sex scenes that highlight the film's tendency to view physical forms and interactions in decidedly clinical terms. But the real standout here is Mr. Keoghan. Within the confines of "Deer's" stripped-down language he conveys a veiled sense of personal menace, but there is also an air of reserved inevitability in his delivery, as though Martin is playing by some set of universal rules that compel him to become an instrument of brutal justice, thus relieving him of any attachment to the outcome. He easily goes toe to toe with the more established actors and leaves an indelible impression. This is a breakout performance.

Viewers should expect to be befuddled and disturbed by "The Killing of a Sacred Deer." This is a movie that won't allow you to settle in comfortably. But those prepared to navigate the discomfort are in for a unique experience that raises unanswered - maybe unanswerable - questions and is brave enough not to let anyone off the hook.