The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017): Ending Explained

Quick Recap

In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, we follow Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell), a respected cardiothoracic surgeon in Cincinnati, whose meticulously ordered life begins to fracture under the weight of a buried past. After a routine surgery goes fatally wrong—compounded by Steven's secret admission of drinking beforehand—the father of 16-year-old Martin Lang (Barry Keoghan) dies on the operating table. Years later, Steven encounters the orphaned Martin at a diner, and out of a mix of guilt and obligation, he invites the boy into his idyllic suburban world, shared with his ophthalmologist wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and their children, 14-year-old Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and 12-year-old Bob (Sunny Suljic).

What starts as awkward but polite family dinners spirals into something far more sinister. Martin, with his eerily calm demeanor and piercing gaze, insinuates himself deeper, forming a peculiar bond with Kim while subtly pressuring Steven for atonement. The tension thickens like fog rolling in from a storm-swept lake—Martin's visits grow frequent, his words laced with unspoken threats, and his mother's flirtations add a layer of uncomfortable intimacy. Soon, the Murphy family's domestic bliss curdles: Bob suddenly loses the use of his legs, collapsing in a heap of confusion and fear, his small body rigid against the plush familiarity of their home. Hospital tests reveal nothing, but Martin's chilling revelation hangs in the air like a metallic tang—Steven must sacrifice one family member to "balance" his father's death, or they will all succumb to a creeping paralysis, starvation, and hemorrhagic torment.

As the curse manifests, Kim collapses mid-choir practice, her voice cracking into silence as she chokes on an apple, joining Bob with a feeding tube snaking unnaturally from her throat. Anna, ever the composed professional, presses Steven for answers, and he confesses the full weight of his negligence. The household, once a sanctuary of sterile perfection, now pulses with dread, the air heavy with the labored breaths of the afflicted and the relentless tick of an unseen clock.

What Happens in the Ending

The film's climax unfolds in a suffocating crescendo of desperation, the Murphy home transformed into a pressure cooker of flickering shadows and stifled sobs. With Bob fully paralyzed, his eyes glazing over with the first hints of bloody tears, and Kim wasting away beside him, Steven's attempts to harm Martin—stalking him in the night, bow in hand—fail miserably, the surgeon's hands trembling with the chill of futility. Martin's curse proves inexorable: the family's bodies betray them one by one, limbs locking in icy rigidity, stomachs rejecting even the illusion of sustenance, the metallic scent of impending blood thick in the sterile hospital air.

In a final bid for equity, Steven devises a ritual of blind chance to select the sacrifice, echoing the impartiality of fate's cruel lottery. The family—Steven, Anna, Kim, and Bob—gather in the dim, echoing living room, the walls seeming to close in like the ribs of a dying beast. Blindfolded to ensure fairness, they draw matches from Steven's outstretched hand, the scrape of wood against skin the only sound piercing the tense hush. Bob, the youngest, pulls the shortest match, his small fingers fumbling in the darkness, sealing his fate with a quiet inevitability.

Steven then leads Bob into the misty woods surrounding their home, the damp earth squelching underfoot, branches whispering like accusatory ghosts. Armed with a hunting bow, Steven's resolve hardens amid the fog-shrouded trees. He shoots once, the arrow thudding into Bob's leg with a wet, visceral snap; Bob's cries echo faintly, muffled by the encroaching gloom. A second shot pierces his stomach, blood blooming dark against the undergrowth, the coppery reek mingling with the loamy scent of decay. Finally, a third arrow finds its mark in Bob's head, silencing the boy's pleas in a final, shuddering exhale. As Steven returns, the curse lifts like a veil torn away—the family's bodies stir, mobility and hunger returning in eerie normalcy. Yet, in the closing scene, Martin joins them at the dinner table, his presence a lingering shadow, the clink of silverware against plates underscoring an unresolved chill.

The Meaning Behind the Ending

At its core, the ending of The Killing of a Sacred Deer dissects the inexorable pull of guilt and retribution, transforming personal negligence into a familial apocalypse. Steven's drunken surgery isn't just a mistake—it's a primal sin, a ripple that drowns his loved ones in slow, bodily horror. The ritual killing of Bob symbolizes the ultimate purge: sacrifice as catharsis, where one death balances the scales of cosmic justice. Martin's curse operates like a visceral metaphor for inherited trauma, the "balance" evoking ancient blood debts, where the sins of the father seep into the veins of the innocent, manifesting as paralysis—a frozen tableau of unresolved grief.

The woods, shrouded in mist and the faint rot of fallen leaves, amplify the psychological descent, turning the act of killing into a sensory ritual of atonement. Bob's death isn't triumphant; it's a gut-wrenching severance, the arrows' impacts echoing the surgeon's scalpel, now turned inward. This ending posits that true equilibrium demands visceral loss, stripping away the veneer of suburban control to reveal the raw, throbbing underbelly of moral compromise. Martin's integration into the family at the end suggests the cycle persists, his calm smile a harbinger of perpetual unease, implying that some debts can only be deferred, not erased.

Character Arcs and Resolution

Steven's arc culminates in a harrowing evolution from detached healer to reluctant executioner, his steady surgeon's hands now slick with familial blood. The confession to Anna marks his unraveling, but the killing of Bob cements his transformation—guilt no longer haunts from afar; it stains his soul directly. Anna, initially a pillar of rational poise, fractures under the weight, her professional facade cracking as she participates in the lottery, emerging hollowed yet resilient, her recovery a numb acceptance of their altered reality.

Kim's infatuation with Martin twists into survival's sharp edge; her brief defiance gives way to passive victimhood, resolved only through Bob's sacrifice, leaving her bond with Martin tainted by the shadow of complicity. Bob, the purest soul, embodies innocence's cruel cost—his arc ends in abrupt finality, a small body felled in the woods, underscoring the theme that children bear the brunt of parental failings. Martin, the avenging specter, achieves a perverse resolution, his intrusion complete as he dines with the survivors, his arc closing not in defeat but in insidious belonging, a reminder that revenge reshapes the avenged as much as the avenger.

Alternate Interpretations

The ending's ambiguity invites multiple lenses, particularly around the curse's reality. One reading frames it as psychological manifestation: Martin's manipulations exploit Steven's guilt, inducing psychosomatic illnesses in the family through suggestion and stress, with Bob's "death" a mercy killing or hallucination born of despair. The blindfolded lottery then becomes a collective delusion, the woods a metaphor for Steven's fractured mind, where the "curse lifting" signals his acceptance of guilt rather than supernatural intervention.

Alternatively, it could be a hyper-realistic revenge tale, Martin's "curse" a calculated poisoning or induced condition via subtle sabotage, his calm demeanor masking sociopathic precision. The ending's domestic normalcy with Martin present suggests ongoing manipulation, subverting resolution into perpetual tension. Or, in a more existential vein, the events are absurd fate—no curse, just random tragedy amplified by Steven's past—where the killing randomizes suffering, questioning free will amid inevitable loss. These layers keep the film unsettling, the fog never fully lifting.

Themes and Symbolism

The ending reinforces Lanthimos' obsessions with powerlessness and ritualized cruelty, subverting familial bonds into a web of enforced sacrifice. Themes of guilt's corrosive spread dominate: Steven's initial sin metastasizes, turning the home into a chamber of bodily betrayal—paralysis symbolizing emotional lockdown, the inability to eat evoking choked-down truths, bleeding eyes a window to inner hemorrhaging. The sacred deer of the title alludes to untouchable innocence (Bob as the "deer" hunted in the woods), its killing a profane necessity, blending Greek tragedy's sacrificial motifs with modern alienation.

Symbolism abounds in the sensory: the bow's taut string mirrors surgical tension, arrows as extensions of Steven's flawed precision; the dinner table's return evokes hollow domesticity, Martin's presence a Trojan horse of unease. Broader, it subverts justice—retribution isn't heroic but grotesque, challenging viewers to confront complicity in systemic failings, where one life for another feels like no victory at all.

Final Thoughts

The Killing of a Sacred Deer ends not with closure but a lingering chill, its atmospheric dread seeping into the bones like the mist of those fateful woods. Lanthimos crafts a masterpiece of psychological unease, where the literal horror of bodily decay amplifies deeper existential voids, making the ending both viscerally shocking and profoundly unsettling. It works brilliantly by denying easy catharsis—Steven's "balance" leaves scars that pulse beneath the surface, inviting endless dissection. For audiences craving films that linger like a half-remembered nightmare, this conclusion is a triumph, a reminder that some sins demand blood, and peace is forever tainted.