Funny Games, USA, 2008

Director Michael Haneke Screenplay Michael Haneke Producer Chris Coen, Hamish McAlpine Director of Photography Darius Khondji Art Director Hinju Kim Costumes David C. Robinson With Naomi Watts (Ann), Tim Roth (George), Michael Pitt (Paul), Brady Corbet (Peter), and Devon Gearhart (Georgie)

Runtime 107 minutes

DVD: USA, 2008 Produced and Distributed by Warner Independent Pictures (Region 1) Aspect Ration 1.85:1 Sound Mix DTS, Dolby Digital, SDDS

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Austrian auteur Michael Haneke directs this shot-by-shot remake of his own 1997 foreign-language film of the same name. Then as now, Haneke is commenting on the American entertainment culture that thrives on violence, especially on killing.

In the decade since Haneke first directed Funny Games (1997), if anything, his commentaries have only been proven correct. Just in the past five years, the cinema landscape has been bombarded with movies that keep upping the ante in terms of murder, brutality, and torture.

In this horror film about a wealthy family of three, a man named George, his wife Ann and their son Georgie, who are taken hostage after their home is invaded by two college-aged serial killers, one of the victims asks, 'Why don't you just kill us?' Peter, the least intelligent and more sensitive of the two killers answers, 'You mustn't forget the importance of entertainment.'

In another scene, Paul, the leader and most talkative of the two killers asks, 'Do you think this is enough?' This angel-face demon, played perfectly by Michael Pitt, looks at the camera and asks the question again. In this way, Haneke is also asking the audience the same thing.

Is this enough? How many movies do we need of people being mass murdered, tortured, or severely brutalized? Is this what we want our culture to be? Is this what we consider fun on a weekend night? Are these our games?

As you watch this film, you can't help but be struck by the fact that while Haneke is himself making a horror film about murder and brutality, Haneke is also rebelling against the rules and conventions that define the genre by not displaying, and in fact not reveling, in that murder and brutality.

Yes, there is violence in this movie, but it all happens off screen. You hear screams, stab wounds, gunshots, and you see the splattering of blood, but Haneke is careful never to show you anyone dying.

The only violent scene is literally reversed by Haneke so that the violence you do see is rendered unreal. Haneke not only breaks the rules of horror films but also that of movies in general.

Haneke's films don't rely on gore and monsters, or other tricks, but most times on just the ordinary. Haneke understands in a Hitchcockian way how to create scary and suspenseful movies without all the usual Hollywood fanfare.

As in Seventh Continent (Der Siebente kontinent, 1989), which was based on a true story that Haneke read in the newspaper about another family of three, a mother, father and daughter, who were found dead in their home, Haneke avoids the fanfare and sensationalism.

While some might have turned that story into a police procedural, trying to find a suspect and a cause, Haneke doesn't. Haneke isn't concerned with suspects or causes. He isn't a sleuth. Haneke is more concerned with consequences and watching them play out. He doesn't ask why. He asks simply rather what and how.

Haneke enjoys one-shots, or long continuous camera takes with no edits or cutaways but just rather lingering on a scene. Haneke likes to sit, stare, and simply observe, whether it's three people sitting in a sedan, as it's going through a car wash, or it's the waves crashing on a dreamy, hazily-shot Australian beach. Haneke lingers, as if to force his audiences to absorb the images like a sponge.

But, as much as Haneke hates editing, he at once will have sequences, some that are as much as fifteen minutes long where there are no wide-shots, but just close-up after close-up of hands and feet doing various things, getting dressed, eating cereal or taking a sledgehammer to an aquarium.

Haneke continues this style in Funny Games (1997), which is by far Haneke's most tortuous and difficult film to watch.

The two serial killers invade a wealthy family's home, go by several alias names, like Beavis and Butthead, and proceed to play games with their hostages. Yet, Haneke builds suspense not with the use of gory and loud visuals.

Haneke is not about quick edits, trying in vain to get the audience to jump out of their seats with false scares or parlor tricks. Haneke scares in a better and smarter way. He merely holds the camera for an extremely long one-shot and simply lets the viewer absorb the implications of what s/he is seeing or hearing, and with the use of sounds, he terrorizes us most of the time with what we’re not shown. The game 'cat-in-a-bag' is perfect symbolism, as the game involves a bag being placed over your head while unspeakable things are done around you.

Haneke doesn't use a musical score, a technique also utilized in the Oscar-wining No Country for Old Men (2007), and Haneke is the king of contrasts. A brutal beating, for example, is contrasted with bird's chirping. Three white, smiling faces are contrasted with devilish lyrics to a hard-metal song.

Michael Pitt alongside Brady Corbet resurrects the same Leopold & Loeb, polite charm, as the two sociopaths manipulate the wealthy family of three, but also the movie-viewing patrons. They philosophize over transcendental issues while they're breaking bones with golf clubs and wondering if the wife has jelly roll-looking fat on her body.

Naomi Watts and Tim Roth deliver truly frightened performances, which have you on the edge of your seat. Both, however, are trumped by the acting of 12-year-old Devon Gearhart, who masterfully portrays their son named Georgie. Gearhart's look of terror, especially during the cat-in-a-bag scene will stay with you long after the headache-inducing, heavy metal credits roll.

All of the horror in this film, by the way, begins over a carton of eggs, which again simplifies the motives of his villains, but drives home the meaninglessness of these movies that Haneke criticizes.

Contributor details

Marlon Wallace is the chief writer for The M report, an online film and television review site. He is also an editor at WBOC-TV.