Anyone who has ever seen a Michael Haneke film will know he can provide a near to perfect, yet challenging piece of cinema and Funny Games is perhaps just a close to perfection like any of the other films which he made that I have seen. You will not hear me complain about the fantastic acting, cinematography, pacing, editing et cetera et cetera. The reason why Funny Games does not receive a ten star rating like Caché, Das Weisse Band or Amour did, is because of Haneke's intention for making it. He made this film where two sadistic young men capture and torture an upper-middle class family because he wanted to make the audience aware of the fact that we enjoy this types of cruel movies. This cruel film is an essay, stating that audiences revel in the torture of innocent fictional characters. And from what I could glean from the actual essay he wrote on the film, there is also some commentary in there about the role of violent media in a violent society, but I will not follow him down that rabbit hole just yet. Let's for now stick with his primary message. I will never deny that audiences don't enjoy violent or even cruel movies. I myself am an enormous fan of all kinds of horror, be it slocky gore fests or serious suspense filled dramatic thrillers. Funny Games is not a horror movie. It is an art film, wearing the mask of a horror film, which it pulls of halfway through, so it can accuse us of enjoying the sick imagery on screen. Through the various fourth-wall breaks the killers interact with us, asking for our opinion and approval, as to say that we are the ones causing all this. We are not Mr. Haneke. Nobody forced you to make a horror film. Just like nobody is going to force me to like your pretentious accusations. And note that when I use the word pretentious I am not referring to the filmmaking, but to the intention of the filmmaker. Funny Games is an expertly crafted insult to the audience for liking a genre of movies the director does not. The film could have been great, but its downfall lays in the fact that it thinks it is better than its colleagues. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to watch a dumb, gory horror flick, and enjoy myself.

I'm a great fan of Naomi Watts, so when I saw Funny Games from 1997, I could not resist watching a remake immediately. After a few minutes, I realized that this is not a classic remake, but literally to the detail the same movie, only shot at another location and with the other set of actors. Ok, they've changed dog breed and cell phone and kitchen appliances are more modern, but everything else is identical. Every scene, every cadre, every word. I do not understand why Haneke had the need to do something like this, without even trying to bring at least a little original spirit into this remake. After fifteen minutes I got bored, so , out of love for Naomi, I just skipped to the key points and watched the most important scenes. At first I was sorry I did not watch the remake first, because of Naomi of course, but I soon discovered that I did not make a mistake because the original is somewhat better.Funny Games is a psychological thriller/horror, which shows the family on vacation in the middle of nowhere. A couple of young sociopaths break into their house and start a psycho-physical terror. Story is solid, with no big holes and illogicality, and shows the situation very realistically. The directing is excellent and manages to build an extremely stressful atmosphere completely without explicit scenes, with this tension somewhat stronger in the original. As far as acting is concerned, it's hard to say which cast is better overall. Although Michael Pitt is really creepy, Arno Frisch and Frank Giering are much better in roles of young sociopaths. On the other hand, Naomi Watts is slightly better Anna than Susanne Lothar, while Tim Rot completely overshadows Ulrich Mühe from the very start.!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!All in all, this more than a solid thriller, with a strong atmosphere that kept me on the edge of the seat, would have earned a strong eight, maybe even nine, if Haneke did not come to a totally moronic idea to add a "fourth dimension", i.e. direct communication with the audience. On several occasions we have freezing of the image, actors talking to the audience, and on top of everything, one of the characters takes the remote control in the middle of denouement, rewinds the movie few minutes back, and then movie takes completely different direction. This kind of scene is suitable only and exclusively in comedies, and even there it's outworn, but for a serious psychological thriller it is a complete deal-breaker and spoils overall impression to seven tops. Due to a certain difference in the atmosphere of the original and the remake, I give them half a score up and down.1997. - 7,5/10 2007. - 6,5/10Arno & Frank - 8/10 Naomi & Tim - 9/10

A family is having a few days off at their cabin near the lake. Two mentally disturbed youngsters invade in their house in order to torture and kill them. Unique... The director is using some tricks in order to make the film less boring. For example the killer is looking at the camera and talks to the audience. Charming... Then, totally unnecessarily, he deliberately delays some scenes. Or maybe not so unnecessarily. The film would be too short without all those tormenting (but only for the viewer) minutes where we have to watch every single moment of the victims crawling or the view of the house at the night for 15 seconds with no reason. And...that's all folks...I mean it...THAT was all... Honestly no difference to any other splatter-horror film ever created except maybe from the hopeless and apparently unsuccessful endeavor of its director to make a difference...

Michael Haneke (MH) is a not so mainstream director (such as Martin Scorsese for example), but he definitely should be. This review will be based 60% in "Funny Games" (FG) and 40% in MH as a director. I find myself very fond of him due to one simple fact: he's a modern-day Stanley Kubrick (SK), which I regard as the best film director/auteur of all time. Dedicated to analyze and explore the dark sides of humanity, he achieves in this film a "funny" portrayal of his point of view about Violence.FG is not for the faint of heart. MH has a distaste of how Hollywood portrays violence in movies, which is an explicit and morbid exploitation, which sometimes reaches unhealthy levels. Talking about violence in the film: the film is violent, but you never get to see violent or bloody images. MH loves to take the attention away from those detailed moments to create expectations and make the audience's imagination start playing "games". The uncertainty of this moments makes the heavy atmosphere of the flick. The greatest example is: when Paul is making himself a sandwich and you hear the gunshot and consequent screams; you feel desperate for knowing what happened. If the movie was made by a USA filmmaker, it is very probably that you could see what happened, in detail.The film walks between fiction and reality. Paul makes various fourth-wall breaks throughout the movie, and he even rewinds the scene where Anna shoots Peter (not allowing that to happen). Peter, on the other hand, refers and critic many aspects of the traditional suspense rules established by USA films. We are accustomed to seeing the protagonist win and live to tell the tale, well, not here. Paul and Peter even have an interesting discussion about fiction and reality at the end of the film, which makes you think about it afterward.Our main villains: charming well-educated sociopaths that will do whatever they please with whoever they want. Taking Paul as the leader, a little perfect Hannibal Lecter (leaving aside Cannibalism and Psychopathy). In the end, they did everything for just one simple aspect: because they could, and no one has ever told them they couldn't do something.Attention is what MH plays within his movies. He demands complete attention from you to understand. Whether it is with Long Shots or never giving explicit detail of what's going on, MH proves to be a skillful manipulator of the audience to achieve this: you leaving the theater wanting more. We are used to finishing a movie totally satisfied with what we saw and how everything ended (happily ever after). Well, not with MH. He wants you to go browsing and find whatever you can about what you just saw. Most than nothing, he wants you to make your OWN conclusions about the story: "Caché" (2005) and "The White Ribbon" (2009) for naming two. MH has between 10 to 15 movies to his name, all of them considered good movies, showing different aspects of humanity (often the dark ones), with a perfect sense of direction and meticulous execution. Tell me if this doesn't remind you of SK: Quality before Quantity. It is also important to state the difference between horror and terror. Horror is for fictional and irrational fears (ghosts and supernatural situations), and terror is for real things (a murderer or an accident). This movie is which? Kind of both isn't it?. On one side, you have a home invasion and in the other an antagonist that can manipulate time and space for achieving success. MH said that the movie was a message about violence in media. He said FG was intended to be neither horror nor terror.Something funny is that MH hates Quentin Tarantino (QT), mostly because he mixes violence and comedy, and his violence is extremely satirical. MH has a violent and bold style for most of his movies. He believes that violence portrayed in movies should have a serious and deep approach, special reason why he despises QT's movies. MH's filming style, psychological approach, and audience manipulation are his greatest weapons. He doesn't fear to make a movie of any theme or genre, and whenever he does, the final product is an instant masterpiece. He made a shot-for-shot remake of FG in 2007 with an entire USA crew. The film received mixed reviews. Why? Because it wasn't the kind of violence and suspense USA audiences like. MH wanted to prove a point, and he succeeded. MY FINAL CONSENSUS: Funny Games is out of the question a different kind of suspense and thriller, but a pretty interesting and effective one. Michael Haneke plays with audiences, in order to bring an excellent law-breaker critic of violence portrayal.