The Killing of a Sacred Deer is weird in the way a short story in the New Yorker is weird, by which I mean unsatisfying. The characters speak strangely and the movie doesn’t wrap things up neatly. But it is intense, and you wait for the turn that eventually declares itself. After that turn–perhaps to movie’s point–life goes on.

If I took anything away from this, it’s that no sacrifice is great enough to atone for our sins. We continue to exist. The cost of that existence is paid by the weak, and we are quick to forget it beneath the trappings of our privilege.