Colin Farrell reunites with director Yorgos Lanthimos, with whom he worked on 2015's bizarre anti-love story The Lobster—but this time around, unsettling quirkiness has given way to unsettling surreal horror. Farrell plays Steven Murphy, a surgeon who befriends a lonely boy who's recently lost his father. Murphy's wife, played by Nicole Kidman, is unnerved by the kid, but the doctor is undeterred from his attempt to mentor him.
The moral of the story: don't doubt your wife's gut instincts, as Murphy discovers to his horror. Or rather, his children's horror, as they're the ones who drag their newly paralyzed bodies around during the second half of the picture. It's a revenge tale underpinned by Greek mythology–the film title is itself a reference to a tale about the murder of a deer belonging to the goddess Artemis. When it comes to the otherworldly, it's tough to beat Greek myths and their rich tradition of death and sacrifice.
