Funny Games

I feel very similar about Funny Games than what I felt after watching The Strangers. Appalled and disturbed. However, Funny Games (as said by the director) seems to be a commentary on violence in media/movies, and not just violence in movies to have violence. Either way, it's certainly difficult to not feel sick to your stomach after witnessing the crimes against the family in Funny Games, but I do appreciate some of the obstacles Michael Haneke takes instead of going through with the many cliches that plague the modern day horror. But I guess we're all left asking the same question...what was the point?

6.8/10

An unusual film that borders on art house horror. Experience almost 2 hours of an innocent family being tortured by 2 psychopaths. Much of the violence is off camera but the associated drama is still disturbing. Without dropping spoilers, the video rewind scene and the film ending might infuriate some vanilla cinema goers but a certain audience will celebrate this unique German horror drama. My rating 7/10

I saw this at the London Film Festival and found it to be exactly what I expected: an English-language facsimile by Michael Haneke of his 1997 German film of the same title. Not that this is a bad thing. It is a testament to Haneke's artistic ability to replicate perfectly his previous film shot-by-shot with equal effect, tension, and intrigue even as one knows what to expect--although it might also say something about Haneke's ego that he doesn't feel that he needed to change or add new material for audiences who've already seen the original. The performances are overall well-executed, especially by Naomi Watts, an actress who has proved that she will still take risks despite the fact that she has made it both in the art-house scene and in mainstream Hollywood.

Haneke wanted to replicate the original film for American audiences since he has considered the story closer culturally to American society. That is a noble effort, but I am not sure if it required him to remake an exact replica of one of his earlier works, nor am I sure that it will have quite the impact he wants since the American audiences he is targeting might avoid it all together (as it might be seen as too art-house or extreme) or be completely turned off by its content and artistic approach. Nonetheless, it is interesting to witness as an exercise in a film artist revisiting his earlier work, even if he didn't bother changing anything.

Watching "Funny Games" is a bit like coming across a major accident on the highway - you know you should continue driving on past the scene, but you just can't keep yourself from slowing down and gawking at all the wreckage.

The premise of the story does not sound very promising at first, as the idea, or a simple variation of it, has served as the foundation for countless such films in the past: an innocent family of three is held hostage in their home by a couple of sadistic killers who systematically abuse and terrorize their victims for their own twisted pleasure.

So many horror movies are predictable and formulaic that it's a pleasant surprise to come across one that actually makes an effort to break free of its bonds and make its own way in the world. And, indeed, "Funny Games" busts through the horror movie conventions with an almost ruthless determination. In this Americanized version of a film he made in his native Austria in 1997, director Michael Haneke scrupulously avoids obvious camera setups and editing techniques, bypassing virtually every storytelling, visual or audio cliché endemic to the genre. There is no background music, for instance, to cue us into the scary moments, no screeching cats jumping out of the shadows, and no point-of-view shots designed to generate easy suspense. Unlike in most films of this type, the violence here happens in an entirely haphazard and random manner, making it all the more frightening in its unpredictability and plausibility. Haneke refuses to cater to the expectations of his audience, making them face the reality of the nightmare he's showing them rather than giving them what it is they may want to see.

Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet are cringe-worthy and terminally creepy as the smarmy psychopaths who get their jollies out of watching other people suffer, while Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Devon Gearhart engage our full sympathy as the hapless victims who have come up against the blank wall of two twisted minds they are woefully unequipped to even understand, let alone wage battle against.

This is one of the most memorable and artful horror films of recent times, but it is also one of the most unnerving and difficult to watch. The movie gets into your bones, no matter how much your better angels may be telling you to keep it out. It's depressing and disturbing and is certainly not intended for all audiences, but it is a movie that it is very difficult to shake off once you've given yourself over to it.

One way to get the most out of Funny Games is to have your expectations open before watching it. It's not a standard horror film aiming to fulfill your needs as a viewer. It's about horror films and us, the audience who gets pleasure from suffering as entertainment. It shows what real horror might look like in an awful situation, and how it psychologically debilitates and paralyzes the people involved.

Although this is almost identical and I liked this remake, I prefer the 1997 Austrian original version. It was one of the most disturbing and effective films I've ever seen. Here the acting is good especially from one of the best actresses out there Naomi Watts, but somehow the original works better. Maybe it was Arno Frisch, who played the main bad guy in the original, an absolutely ice cold character. Arno played it so well, there was a threatening menace underneath the polite and clean-cut exterior. Michael Pitt in this U.S. Version doesn't quite have that, but even so I still think he does well.

One possible flaw that I agree with others is the family seemed too passive. In the beginning the two bad guys are armed with only a golf club. Naomi Watt's, who is in amazing shape at 40, looked like she might have done something more to get out of it. However, an argument can be made that the family reacted realistically because they were portrayed as rich, docile people who listened to classical music and went boating. People who are not violent and erroneously think everyone, even these two sick guys, have a better nature they can appeal to by simply saying "why don't you just leave us alone and go?" They've been sheltered from people who are simply evil and lack empathy and just don't give a sh*t. Their comfortable existence has been shattered and they don't know how to react. We're so used to Hollywood b.s. where everyone is a hero and fights back and we all cheer and go home. Yeah that's entertaining too but we've seen that a million times already. Maybe some people would be paralyzed out of fear like this family. Either way, I was willing to put their passiveness aside because everything else in the film was done so well.

The original right now has a rating of 7.7 at IMDb and many glowing reviews, yet this U.S version is a lot lower at 6.4 and many b*tching and moaning 1 star reviews. Not to sound condescending, but maybe people who watch subtitled non-English films are more accepting of weird, offbeat films that don't follow conventional Hollywood style dialogue, plot and presentation, and they're more open to this movies style of direction, like the very long takes of people just sitting there in misery. I'm not stupid enough to say one has to like this film, I get annoyed at some indie type films and their quirkiness myself, but some of the 1 star reviewers sound like a bunch of crybabies.

Funny Games slaps you in the face and taunts you and it rarely gives in to what you need as a viewer, and that may be frustrating at times but at least it's something different.