"Sacred Deer" Trailer Kills
Thursday, August 17, 2017 at 10:10PM Chris here. I take back every complaint I've had about trailers using moody covers of familiar songs, and all thanks to a supremely terrifying use of Ellie Goulding's "Burn" in the new trailer for The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Paired with some chilling and evocative images, the song helps make the trailer as scary as any full film in theatres this year. Yorgos Lanthimos is ready to shake us up again and with even darker laughs than before!
This trailer is a thing of wonder, a certain contender for best of the year for how it quickly grabs you by the shoulders and lingers after its done. It does what so few trailers do: gives us scant plot details while selling us on mood. Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman's immediate reuniting post-Beguiled looks to be even more slippery and poisoned than what they delivered together this year, so it will be exciting to see both performers return to something more outre. Try as I might, I didn't spot Alicia Silverstone's reportedly brief role anywhere here - but trust that we'll be eager for her return!
But my big question mark will be Dunkirk lad Barry Keoghan as the film's pseudo-villain - just how nefarious will he be and could this be one of the major fall breakouts? With the film playing TIFF, expect to hear our thoughts before the film opens right in time for Halloween on October 27!
Reader Comments (8)
Best film advertisement since The Master's first teaser.
Yeah, trailer of the year material right here.
Honestly, is anyone making better trailers than A24 these days? My goodness.
Just saw the film a few days ago - Keoghan is phenomenal in it. Best in show even though the cast is uniformly strong.
I'm by no means a Kidman stan (very much the opposite, in fact). But unlike Rachel Weisz, she's very good at negotiating Lanthimos's deadpan absurdism, while still contributing something of her own. She finds ways to shade in the character without sticking out from the ensemble in a jarring way.
The problem with the film though is that Lanthimos's signature deadpan absurdism is starting to deliver diminishing returns.
I liked The Lobster very much, but I didn't feel it made its point very coherently. I wasn't sure it was even trying to make a coherent point by the end.
Sacred Deer, however, takes pointlessness to a whole new level. And it has enough storyline for a film roughly half this length.
It's still probably worth seeing, very atmospheric and each individual scene is masterfully crafted. But I do hope Lanthimos's sensibility starts to expand a bit. Even Wes Anderson isn't quite *this* one-note.
I have also seen the movie, and I disagree mostly with goran. The point of all of the Lanthimos movies I have seen (DOGTOOTH, LOBSTER and KILLING) is to highlight the absurdities of the family structures embraced by society. I agree a bit with your final paragraph - the only drawback for me for KILLING was that I knew what to expect now, so it didn't have the shock value of DOGTOOTH, or the "finallly someone gets the ridiculousness of society's treatment of singles" feeling of LOBSTER. But it's still damn excellent.
And I can confirm that Silverstone is only in one sequence, but it is a memorable one. (I don't think it would be a spoiler if I revealed who she is, but I won'tt do it in case others think different.)
That is a very impressive trailer. I didn't think I was gonna see the movie - but that trailer certainly has me intrigued.
Everyone got the point of The Lobster insofar as the general "hook" of the film. They got it from the trailer. Its not that hard to get. But that point isn't enough for a two hour film. Okay...so coupledom is inherently a little weird. But what about those of us who do have significant others? The movie wasn't funny enough or romantic enough to sustain such a thin premise.
I'm also confused as to why anyone is referring to Sacred Deer as absurdist comedy. Isn't this a horror film?
The other trailer in which Farrell and the boy are discussing body hair was more intriguing- it looks interesting but left me cold
I've never jumped on the Lanthimos bandwagon, but SACRED DEER is my favourite. Probably because it relies less on his "weird" stuff than his other films, and verges into psychological horror territory. I don't think the Haneke references (particularly Funny Games) are accidental.