Yorgos Lanthimos never steps in the same river twice. Or he never casts the same spell. Or — well, you get it. The guy mixes it up, shuffling tones and genres as the mood strikes him to interrogate social structures and find humanity in the most absurd situations; his latest, Poor Things, up-ends the Frankenstein archetype by making the monster the smartest person in the room, and letting both her and the audience understand that the scientists trying to control and possess her are, well, dipshits.

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, actor and filmmaker Liz Whitmere — whose new short Cold makes its world premiere this Saturday at the Blood in the Snow film festival — joins me to dig into what’s still Lanthimos’ strangest film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the 2017 drama where Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan face off on an almost mythological level over guilt and culpability, with Farrell’s family hanging in the balance.

Is it a post-Haneke wallow in arch misery porn, or an Ostlundian comedy so bleak no one dares to laugh? Maybe it’s both! I don’t know! But Liz has ideas, and they’re good ones. Give her a listen! Just make sure you’ve already seen the movie, because we spoil the crap out of this one.

Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you sit at home waiting for your eyes to stop weeping blood.

And then you can catch up on your Shiny Thingses! Last week I reviewed Imprint’s new special editions of The Orphanage and Bug — both great — and Warner’s excellent 4K restoration of The Fugitive, which really holds up thirty years on. Julianne Moore being even more self-righteous than Harrison Ford is kind of amazing, honestly. Why haven’t you subscribed yet? You’ve already missed the Oppenheimer giveaway, you know.