Something very creepy is happening to Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman and their family in the new trailer for The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the latest film from acclaimed The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos. Killing of a Sacred Deer played in competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival and came away with a prize for Best Screenplay for Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou (tied with Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here).

In Killing of a Sacred Deer, Colin Farrell plays a heart surgeon who takes a mysterious young man (Barry Keoghan) under his wing and introduces him to his wife (Kidman) and children (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic). When Farrell's family begins exhibiting bizarre symptoms, the true horrible nature of the situation is revealed to Farrell and he is forced to make a terrible choice.

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A new trailer for Killing of a Sacred Deer (via A24) gives us a taste of the movie's unnerving tone, with one of the blurbs teasing it as an "outrageous revenge saga." The clip is dominated by an a capella vocal performance by Cassidy, as she sings Ellie Goulding's "Burn" while appropriately mysterious images drift by, teasing the movie's story of psychological menace and bizarre retribution. A bearded Farrell and a haunted-looking Kidman seem helpless to do anything as the creepy Keoghan (fresh off his memorable appearance in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk) visits his mysterious vengeance upon them.

The new poster for the film captures the same chilly sense of dread that permeates the trailer, as you can see below:

With its story of a mysterious stranger infiltrating a family and unleashing psychological horror, Killing of a Sacred Deer seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to Darren Aronofsky's upcoming film mother!. Compare the chilling tone of the trailer above to the trailer for mother! and the similarities seem to deepen, though mother! seems to hint at more of an over-the-top classic horror movie experience while Killing of a Sacred Deer suggests something more restrained and Kubrickian. Each film in its own way promises a nerve-rattling experience, giving fans of slow-building psychological horror a lot to look forward to this fall.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer marks the second collaboration between director Lanthimos and star Colin Farrell after their work together on the strange dystopian comedic allegory The Lobster. Their new movie together looks much less whimsical than that one, which starred Farrell as a single man given 45 days to find a partner or he would be turned into a lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos never shies away from an unlikely premise, as his cult classic Dogtooth also demonstrated).

NEXT: Colin Farrell Starring in Disney's Live-Action Dumbo

Source: A24

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