For me the movie was a waste of time, 2 hours, not worth

The title refers to the killing of Iphigenia before the Trojan war expedition of the Greeks by her father Agamemnon. The deer was the symbol of the goddess Artemis (Diana) and in one dubious version of the Euripides play a deer is substituted for Iphigenia on the sacrificial altar. The movie however has nothing really to do with all this except that the main character, to expiate his killing of a man, is forced by his son to kill one of his own children. This movie is sick, disgusting, and revolting for the most part. The acting by Colin Farrell (with a long beard) and Nicole Kidman is adequate but the viewer is not ever sure what is happening or why. I cannot find it anything but absurd.

I understand this film is a modern day portrayal of Greek mythology and the stilted nature characters and character portrayal is (I believe) meant to bring the story to the fore in arthouse fashion.Regardless, I found the execution of this adapted tale as a whole, coupled with it's incongruous soundtrack didn't really do it for me.As scenes repeated (some of which you may struggle to see the relevance of) I found myself researching Iphigenia and the ancient story on which this film is based on my phone. It may be more artistic than I was willing to entertain at the time of viewing, but the relentlessly cold nature of the characters made disconnection inevitable. It is about this point I realised (and you will too) there will never be any modern-day rationale or logical closure in the sense that a more viewer friendly film would put forward, even one portraying an ancient mythological happening.I didn't ask for a reward when I started watching this film, and certainly none was offered.

Yorgos Lanthimos's most recent and polarizing film, "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" seems to me like one of those films which one half of it's viewers absolutely will despise, and the other half will hail as an underrated masterpiece of psychological horror, somewhat akin to classics like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which by the way, shares many aesthetic elements with this film, and will undoubtedly inspire a slew of comparisons from people who feel it's ripping The Shining off, or working as something as an homage to it. Anyway, me personally I felt that it didn't work as a horror film in the same way that The Shining did, as it wasn't particularly frightening, lacking any jump-scares or the traditional elements of what many people consider trademarks of the horror genre nowadays, however for anyone familiar with Yorgos's previous films such as The Lobster and especially Dogtooth, not to mention the fact that this film was distributed by A24 Pictures, also responsible for such "art-house" type horror films like 2017s "It Comes at Night" or 2016's "The Witch" than you will quickly figure out that this film has far less in common with the likes of "Paranormal Activity" or "Unfriended" and much more in common with the films of Ingmar Bergman or Michael Haneke, both European "auteur" filmmakers who have a long history of making uncompromisingly dark and grim films which are a large hit among the Sundance crowd. What this film lacks in flashy visuals and gory death scenes in makes up for with an overwhelming sense of unease and despair which slowly, very slowly, ratchets up the tension and atmosphere as the film progresses and you learn more and more about the relationship and tragic history between the surgeon Dr. Murphy (Colin Farrell) and a strange, almost alien boy named Martin (Barry Keoghan). At first Martin just seems a bit awkward and geeky, the sort of quiet introverted type who always keeps a low profile in public and doesn't really speak much, but as the film progresses and he gets to know Murphy's wife and kids better, especially his teenaged daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) it quickly becomes clear that his odd, robotic mannerisms and way of speaking are more than just harmless quirks but the hallmarks of a truly sinister and dangerous youth who is hellbent on serving his own brand of retribution for an unforgivable act done to him by the father, but it's his family that must pay the ultimate price, and Dr. Murphy is eventually forced to make a horrific decision that inevitably will tear his family apart one way or the another. In "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" revenge truly is a dish served, cold and bleak. Many people will not like this film because many things are left unexplained at the end and it also features elements which many have seen as attempts at dark humor although I personally rarely found this film to be funny, just odd. The dialogue also is incredibly stilted and robotic, but this only works in favor of Martin, with everyone else it serves as a real crutch in allowing the audience to sympathize with their plight and comes off as very unnecessary and forced most of the time, and thus many who watch it will see it as being pretentious and laughable even though the lines themselves are delivered in a deadpan serious manner, and others will criticize it for being "weird for the sake of being weird" which I definitely feel is a legitimate criticism as the film is filled with "weird" scenes which seem to make little or no sense on the first viewing, so overall whether or not you enjoy the film will be based on whether or not your able to look past the surface level and dive deep into the hidden metaphors and allegories lurking around every corner, waiting to be analyzed by those of a more analytical mindset, anyway, I know this review may come off as incredibly meandering or even pretentious itself, but I do genuinely feel that it's the sort of film you need to watch more than once to truly understand, but that's just my take on it.