THE KILLING OF the Sacred Deer stars an Oscar winner and an Oscar nominee in the form of Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman. But it’s young Dublin actor Barry Keoghan that’s lapping up most of the critics praise.
Barry Keoghan, formerly known as the Love/Hate cat killer, has emerged as the star of the upcoming Yorgos Lanthimos movie.
Barry plays Martin, the son of a former patient of Colin Farrell’s cardiac specialist Steven. He gets attached to the doctor, and yes, he’s extremely convincing and extremely creepy.
But why is he so attached? When Steven’s two kids get mysteriously sick, Martin gives them an ultimatum. To say more is to ruin the experience for you. Just know that you’ll never quite look at Keoghan without getting shivers.
The praise is coming in in floods on Twitter
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The reviews themselves have mostly been outstanding, with Barry often listed as the stand-out act
The LA Times praises Keoghan’s “fearsome breakout performance of a disaffected teen as malevolent force”.
The New York Times also praised his chilling performance.
Mr. Keoghan, has the ability to at once solicit and repel sympathy and a face that suggests both absolute innocence and terrible cunning. Martin is an abstraction, the embodiment of an occult principle of cosmic vengeance, and Mr. Keoghan makes him appropriately menacing and also pitiable, since he’s also a grieving, needy child. This incongruity is the key to the movie, but it’s the key to an empty box. You will suffer in vain.
GULP.
The AV club says that Keoghan has the “kind of creepy thousand-yard calm that you see in mug shots after a mass murder, neighbors prattling on about what a ‘nice boy’ the culprit always seemed”.
He and his on screen mother Alicia Silverstone even got kudos from GQ for “making the most broadly hilarious/viscerally unnerving mother/son combo since we were introduced to Norman and Norma Bates”.
The Irish Times noted that he “holds his own admirably against such experienced pros as Kidman and Farrell” while NPR topped it off, calling the Irish newcomer gives a ‘superbly creepy and insinuating performance here as a figure of mysterious yet unambiguous menace’.
Go on Barry, we’ll get the gold shine ready for Oscar season.
The Killing of the Sacred Deer is released next Friday, November 3.
