The Killing Of A Sacred Deer Ending Explained: An Impossible Choice

The films of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos aren't for everyone. They're aggressively uncomfortable, poking and prodding the audience with all manner of shocking content and even more shocking ways of presenting it, but there is a lot to love in his deliciously disturbing filmography. Whether he's working from a screenplay he developed with frequent collaborator Efthimis Filippou or one written by "The Great" creator Tony McNamara, Lanthimos manages to inject his films with his unique vision, using characters that seem totally inhuman to force the audience to contemplate their own humanity. This can lead to his films being a little confusing, and that includes his 2017 thriller "The Killing of a Sacred Deer." 

"The Killing of a Sacred Deer" stars Colin Farrell as heart surgeon Steven Murphy, who develops a bizarre relationship with 16-year-old Martin Lang (Barry Keoghan), whose father died on Steven's operating table. Martin begins to insert himself into the Murphy family, getting especially close to Steven's preteen daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and even younger son Bob (Sunny Suljic) before revealing his true intentions to the family: he's going to make Steven choose a family member to sacrifice, otherwise his wife and children will die of a slow, terrifying illness. While our review found the film a little too bleak, there is a great deal of Lanthimos and Filippou's dark absurdist humor as well, making "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" one of the director's best. 

Let's dig into this twisted little film and answer some of its biggest questions — starting with why everyone speaks and acts so strangely.

While some of the unusual dialogue choices in Lanthimos's films with McNamara, "Poor Things" and "The Favourite," can be attributed to being in different time periods, "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" seems to be contemporary and set in our world or a world very much like it. Everyone speaks in a bizarre, stilted manner, however, and they tell one another things that seems completely out of place. For example, Steven tells a co-worker that his daughter has begun menstruating with the same casual attitude one might have when telling someone about a new recipe or a football game, and his co-worker doesn't seem at all phased. 

The extremity of it varies with each film, but this kind of distanced, inhuman acting is a Lanthimos trademark (along with amazing dance scenes, of which "Sacred Deer" unfortunately has none). When his characters do eventually show moments of real vulnerability and emotion, it tends to feel more impactful because they otherwise seem so separated from their feelings. What's great is that it can work for different effects, ranging from pure horror to bits of dark comedy that help break up the otherwise bleak narratives. It's all about unsettling the viewer into terror or laughter, or sometimes both. In the case of "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," the story is based on a classic tragedy and the unusual acting style and dialogue also help make it feel more like a stage play, giving another layer of artificiality.

While the screenplay for "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" by Lanthimos and Fillipou is a wholly original story, it is inspired by the ancient Greek tragedy of Iphigenia, the daughter of Mycenaean king Agamemnon (you know, the guy Brian Cox played in "Troy"). In the version of the myth told by classic tragedian Euripides, "Iphigenia in Aulis," Agamemnon offends the goddess of the hunt, Artemis, when he kills a deer in her sacred forest while readying his forces to invade Troy. The goddess stops the winds that the soldiers need to set sail and refuses to let them leave until the king makes things right by sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia. As she is sacrificed, the beautiful young woman turns into a doe, and it's assumed that Artemis took the Iphigenia to live among the gods. 

In "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," Martin takes on the role of the goddess Artemis, with Steven as Agamemnon. Instead of simply forcing Steven to sacrifice his daughter, however, Martin tortures Steven with a kind of "Sophie's Choice," forcing him to pick which member of his family he wants to kill. There's a bit of a time limit, however, as Martin has somehow cursed or poisoned the children, who lose the ability to walk and soon lose all desire to eat. When they begin bleeding from their eyes, he tells them, they will be close to death. If Steven cannot make his choice, Martin will make it for him in this way. But how does he do it? 

Keoghan plays Martin as a kind of mischievous imp: an absolute gremlin of a teenager who clearly derives joy from the discomfort he's causing Steven that might even go beyond his need for revenge — but is he a supernatural being? He's replacing the goddess Artemis from the myth and it certainly seems like he's able to cause the sickness in the Murphy children without any clear method. He also demonstrates his control when he briefly allows Kim to walk again just by instructing her to do so during a phone call. 

Because "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" is more of a parable than a realistic representation of life, some things are simply left unexplained. It's possible that Martin poisoned the kids during his time getting close to each of them, as he does spend time alone with each, or that he's continuing to drug them through some method (maybe the cigarettes he gets Kim hooked on?). It's also entirely possible that he is actually some kind of inhuman, preternatural being capable of truly cursing the Murphy family. Maybe that's why he can't eat spaghetti properly. 

Much like another Lanthimos and Fillipou collaboration, "The Lobster," the "how" behind everything that happens isn't really the point. We will never know how, exactly, people are turned into animals if they can't find love in "The Lobster," and we will never know how Martin manages to impart his curse. What's more important is that Steven is the one who has doomed them through his inability to take responsibility for himself and his actions.

In the end, Steven is unable to choose whether to kill one of his children or his wife, who tells him to kill one of the children because she's still able to have another one. (Yikes.) He even goes to his kids' school and asks the principal which one is objectively the better child, learning only that they're both a little restless and Kim did an excellent report on "Iphigenia in Aulis." We will never know for certain how much the death of Martin's father really was Steven's fault, though it's clear that he is not always the most responsible surgeon. In fact, there are hints that Steven is either a necrophiliac or is molesting his unconscious patients, as he requires his wife to lie motionless in a T-pose when they have sex, something his daughter later imitates when trying to seduce Martin.

Potentially unfathomable fetish aside, Steven's crime is being unable to choose a sacrifice to the point where Bob begins bleeding from his eyes, a truly horrific scene that highlights how much the children are suffering because of Steven's inability to make a decision. In classic tragedies, the tragic hero must have a specific flaw, and in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," Steven's great flaw is that he cannot take on responsibility, leading him to indecision. 

He eventually puts the family around him, covers his eyes, and spins in a circle with a loaded gun, shooting when he stops. He kills Bob, fulfilling the rules of the sacrifice and saving both Kim and Anna (who never shows signs of the illness, but Martin promises that she will). Steven couldn't even take responsibility for the choice of who to sacrifice, and instead left it up to random chance.

After Steven kills poor little Bob, we see a final scene in the diner where Steven and Martin used to meet before Steven introduced Martin to his family. The remaining members of the Murphy family are sitting together in Steven and Martin's old spot. The family have never been particularly expressive or warm, but it's clear that even more coldness has settled over them in the wake of Bob's death. It's easy to imagine how bitterness could set in because Steven not only failed to really choose between them, but also put them into the situation in the first place. 

Martin is also at the diner, watching them from the bar counter. The family get up and leave, while Martin remains behind. Their ordeal is over, as far as his involvement is concerned, and now everyone can theoretically move on with their lives. Their total lack of retaliation against him hints at the original text and his role as the human representation of an actual goddess, though it could also be just another instance where Steven fails to take action. The movie ends on that note, offering more questions than answers, which honestly is kind of Lanthimos's whole deal. For more tragic and darkly comedic parables, make sure to check out his most recent film, "Kinds of Kindness," which is essentially "The Twilight Zone" for perverts. It's a guaranteed feel-bad good time.