What is The Killing of a Sacred Deer's IQ Score?

The Killing of a Sacred Deer has an IQ Score of 160/200 on TV Intelligentsia's Intelligence Quotient framework, placing it in the Masterclass tier. The score breaks down to 41/50 Cognitive Stimulation, 38/50 Educational Value, and 41/50 Craft & Quality.

Is The Killing of a Sacred Deer educational?

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is strong on educational value, 38/50 on TVI's rubric, which covers academic content, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, life skills, and knowledge transfer.

How does TV Intelligentsia calculate IQ Score?

TV Intelligentsia's current published formula is round((Cognitive Stimulation × 0.4 + Educational Value × 0.35 + Craft & Quality × 0.25) × 4), scoring titles from 0 to 200 across five tiers. TVI publishes a three-dimension breakdown only when those values reproduce the displayed composite. The framework is published at tvintelligentsia.com/methodology/.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer IQ Score 160/200

The Killing of a Sacred Deer has an IQ Score of 160/200 on TV Intelligentsia's Intelligence Quotient rubric, placing it in the Masterclass tier.

By Jordan Robinson, MD, MPH·Updated 2026-08-02·Methodology

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160/ 200

Masterclass

Exceptional cognitive and educational substance, delivered with craft that sustains close attention

Score Breakdown

Cognitive Stimulation/50

Educational Value/50

Craft & Quality/50

IQ = round((Cognitive × 0.4 + Educational × 0.35 + Craft × 0.25) × 4) · How we score →

What these dimensions mean

Cognitive Stimulation: how much the title demands of your mind, its structural complexity, ideas, and sustained intellectual engagement.
Educational Value: what you take away, across academic content, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, life skills, and knowledge transfer.
Craft & Quality: production excellence in service of the work, its direction, writing, performance, and aesthetic intent.

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Why you should trust this score

Scored under Jordan Robinson, MD, MPH

Physician and founding editor. Maintains the adult catalog against the published rubric and reviews the rubric application.

Methodology

Published rubric, v1.3.1

Formula

round((C × 0.40 + E × 0.35 + Q × 0.25) × 4)

Database scale

2,597 titles, version-controlled

TVI Canon

Yorgos Lanthimos →

How we stay independent. Editorial scores are not for sale. TVI may take on paid advisory or research work, but no commercial relationship buys coverage, advance access to scores, favorable treatment, or a change to a published finding. We pay for our own streaming subscriptions, and no reviewer sees sponsor data or affiliate revenue tied to a score. More about how we work →

The TVI Take

Yorgos Lanthimos's 2017 Euripides-coded thriller anchored by Colin Farrell as a cardiothoracic surgeon whose family is mysteriously afflicted after he forms a friendship with a teenage boy whose father died on his operating table. The structural commitment to letting the supernatural-revenge premise operate without explanation, and the deadpan-procedural-clinical register the dialogue maintains, established the film as the catalog's most-formally-disciplined work.

People & Production Yorgos Lanthimos · United Kingdom 16 connections