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Funny Games: Michael Haneke
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Michael Haneke’s 1997 film, Funny Games, was one of the best horror films of the 1990s. At a time when the Scream effect was in full force, delivering watered down shocks to audiences who’d come to expect safety, fun and little else in the dark recesses of the multiplex, Funny Games came along to remind us that horror movies still had the power to terrify. An intense story that mined its premise for maximum suspense, Haneke’s film ... took sadistic pleasure in thrusting the viewer into the grisly proceedings in the most subversive way possible. And it was all the more unsettling because of it.
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Notoriously nihilistic filmmaker Michael Haneke revisits one of his most controversial works in this remake of 1997's Funny Games starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. When a family of three arrives at their remote summer cabin for a quiet getaway, the sudden arrival of two psychotic men sets the stage for a harrowing life-or-death struggle that offers savage commentary on the use of violence in entertainment. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
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Haneke is on record as saying that he always considered Funny Games to be an "American story", as he regarded the use of violence as a form of entertainment to be a specifically American phenomenon. No matter that this is a bit of a flawed viewpoint: having the aggressors seem straight out of the O.C. gives the impact of their sadistic actions an even more discomfiting air. Michael Pitt (charismatic and barbarous) and Brady Corbett (seemingly dopey but utterly vicious) are both excellent, but their performances leave one feeling a bit um "seen it all before".
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There's a trailer out for a remake of the German horror/suspense film Funny Games. The interesting thing about this is that Michael Haneke, who directed the original is ... directing the remake.
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During interviews for Cache, Haneke cited an old German expression that translates, roughly, to “television is there for switching off.” Funny Games is a film of exquisite craft and self-defeating aspirations. It’s there for turning off.
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Michael Haneke