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Funny Games

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: R
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

Michael Haneke’s Funny Games takes joy in punishing its audience. I was appalled, offended, and utterly absorbed by everything I was seeing, experiencing an array of different emotions as I sat in disbelief at what the film presented.

Funny Games is a shot-for-shot remake of Haneke’s 1997 film of the same name, only this time with an English-speaking cast (all of whom deliver superb performances). Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Devon Gearhart star as a family spending a week in their secluded summer house until two strangers (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) arrive at the front door. The two then put the family through a series of brutal “games,” placing the ultimate bet that husband, wife, and child will all be dead by morning.

Horrible things may happen to the family, but this violence is rarely shown. The reactions of the family, as they watch each other being tortured, are more terrifying than any products of makeup effects or CGI.

Haneke definitely has an agenda and his point is clear - audiences, which consistently pay for violent films, are proponents to an increasingly violent society. He knows that many will come to this film expecting it to be a nonstop thrill-ride, and he wants to show them what real violence is actually like.

Nothing in this film is taboo with women, children, and animals all being fair game. Haneke points out to the audience, not so subtly, that they have paid to see this family’s torture, so the blame falls on the audience if feelings of discomfort arise. “You’re rooting for them (meaning Watts, Roth, and Gearhart), aren’t you?” the villain asks the audience directly. Haneke knows that the audience wants the family to survive, and he takes great joy in smashing these hopes to the ground.

Funny Games hates its audience and, for thinking violence is fun, they are treated to a two-hour spanking. I left the theater feeling fascinated and disturbed, and to this moment I still cannot get Funny Games out of my head. The film is hard to sit through, ugly, and mean, yet it never declares itself anything more. Funny Games will have you in its grip from start to finish, and although the film is horrendous on almost every level, it will make you squirm and think simultaneously. Such a feeling is refreshing, albeit somewhat bittersweet.