In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, cardiologist Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) begins meeting with a disturbed teenager (Barry Keoghan of Dunkirk) for mysterious reasons. Soon, terrible things are happening to Steven’s family—his ophthalmologist wife Anna, played by Nicole Kidman, and his two children, Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and Bob (Sunny Suljic). In the chilling first trailer, set to Kim’s a cappella interpretation of Ellie Goulding’s hit “Burn,” the characters can be seen collapsing to the ground one by one, apparently paralyzed from the waist down. “Don’t be scared, mom. You’ll see you won’t be able to move either,” we hear Kim say.
There has been no shortage of “creepy kid” stories in the horror genre, but The Killing of a Sacred Deer is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the celebrated Greek filmmaker who’s created richly unique worlds in films like Dogtooth and his first English-language outing, The Lobster. This also serves as a welcome reunion on a couple of levels, with Kidman and Farrell together on screen for the second time this year following their searing performances in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, and Farrell giving what is sure to be another excellent turn under Lanthimos’ direction. Reviews out of the Cannes film festival, where it premiered earlier this year, also suggest that this psychological thriller will be a strange, haunting trip worth experiencing.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer arrives in theaters Oct. 27.
