Customer Reviews

Funny Games [Import]

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

The "games" in this movie, are not funny. Not one whole minute of this movie is funny. It is unsettling, intense, and ironic at parts. The plot is simple. A family of three (four, counting the dog) are taking a vacation at a serene looking spot near a lake. But even during the opening credits, we well know that the tone of the film is anything but serene as John Zorn's crazy death metal blares at you all of a sudden in a creepy frenzy of buzzing guitars, high-pitched screams, and incoherent lyrics that assaults your senses! Not even ten minutes into the film, the family meets two strangers who claim to be friends of the neighbors, in which they apparently force their way into their home and force them to play their fiendish "games."

The cast in this film is terrific! Our leads Susann Lothar and Ulrich Muhe are compelling in their roles of the mother and father forced to endure mental and physical torture from their captors. The Stefan Clapczynski who plays the little boy is effective as an innocent who is helpless to defend himself or his family. Arno Frisch is ruthless and brilliant in his role of the sadistic leader of the two, Paul (or Jerry, or Butt-head). Frank Giering is creepy in his role of Paul's sidekick Peter (or Fatty, Fatso, Tom, or Beavis). To add to the creepiness of the film, the leader Paul, occasionally shifts his glance to the camera, and either winks at it, or makes us, as an audience, participate in the film saying quotes like, "You're on their side, aren't you?" This approach disturbed me and actually made me think that I had no power to stop these sickos! Very few movies have that effect on me nowadays.

Even though the directing is top-notch you'll encounter some slow spots in the middle of film. I found it interesting that in the most violent scenes of the movie, the camera went somewhere else, or shifted to the person doing the violence, rather than actually showing the bloodshed. So all you gore fans might not be impressed by this. The limited blood didn't faze me as much and even the subtitles seemed to vanish as I watched with anticipation of a rescue that vanishes again and again. It was the content of the film that impressed me. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real-time, which only increases the intensity of the family's suffering and several sequences are incredibly difficult to watch. "Funny Games" literally is a devastating cinematic experience and definitely not intended for all types of viewers.

This is still the worst movie ever made. It is pretentious, self-indulgent, and meaningless. It wants to be cooler-than-thou, but it ends up embracing the very concepts it wants to satirize. Ultimately, the most that could be said about it is that it is an interesting failure.

Looking over these reviews, a curious viewer may feel inclined to prepare him/herself for the most harrowing cinematic experiance of our time. I assure you, there is no need. The film, though entertaining in its sociopathic wit, is not nearly so disturbing as these reviews imply. "Watch it if you Dare"? More like "Watch it if you Care" I'd say.

A few things you should know before you invest your time
1) This movie bends many of the basic axioms of film-making, including the breaking of the fourth wall.
2) Every twist of fate, luck or misfortune favors these omnipotent Bad guys.
3) The ending is not "happy", but you won't lose sleep over it. 4)From the begining this movie is winking at you. Don't take it so seriously. I don't really think we are meant to care about this family of moronic suburbonites, anyway.
The inclusion of the audience, in the activity appears to have been incorporated for comic effect. This movie is more of a black comedy cum social commentary than anything else. Keep that in mind, and it will all make sense.

I find it odd that we are more disturbed by Funny Games (which is purely ficticious and hypothetical) than by a film like Fargo, which makes a rather insensitive comedy out of a true, gruesome kidnapping/murder.

"review" means "review," not telling the entire story of the film so you ruin it for someone who hasn't seen it. Why is this such a difficult concept? Please, pass it on...

Anyway ... this is a highly disturbing, frustrating film for sure, with occasional flashes of brilliance. Forget the people who say it's gory; they were obviously watching another film. The visual violence is extremely minimal. There's more in some cartoons. But the IDEA of violence, the suggestion of it is quite another thing. Sort of a Eurotrash version of Hills Have Eyes, but with several major differences. Definitely not for kids or paranoid, excitable people. The only real flaw: the way too-extended "did the DVD jam?" real-time sequence. You'll know it when you see it.

Like the serial killer/thriller stuff? Like to be entertained by psycho's? FG is for you! It's a mind trip to the hilt in line with insanity and a complete abandonment of the value of life. There's nothing funny about these games. It's a blood curdler! It's a 5-star gem. Your flesh will crawl because it is a true testimony to how vulnerable and trusting we can be...only to be stabbed in the back by our own generosity. Stop laughing and get serious with FG. This one is a fine-tuned melodic masterpiece.

An extradionary film that manages to be terrifying and full of tension without one single scene of actual violence. All of the physical violence occurs offscreen. The viewer is forced to watch in suspense as two madmen "play" with a captive family and see the horrific results of these acts. Chilling film of strangers randomly terrorizing a family. Even having subtitles couldn't break the tension. Just an amazing piece of film making.

An affluent young couple, Anna (Susanne Lothar) and Georg (Ulrich Muhe), drive in their shiny four wheel drive car to their beautiful house by the beautiful mountain lake with their young boy Schorschi (Stefan Clapczynki), towing their shiny sailing boat and listening to cds of their favourite classical music. When they arrive, it seems the neighbours have visitors, a couple of young men, Peter (Frank Giering) and Paul (Arno Frisch). Then, while Georg and Schorschi are off working on getting the boat ready, Peter comes calling. He would very much like to borrow some eggs. Anna lets him into the kitchen and gives him some. But he drops them and asks that she gives him more. She does and he heads off but he is, he says, intimated by the dog and drops the eggs once again. Now Paul too shows up. They would really like some more eggs please. And there is something not quite right about these young men: something menacing in their manner. And why are they both wearing white gloves? Now Anna just wants them to leave. Georg returns and she demands he throw them out. A little confused and reluctant, he tries to do so. Whereupon they smash his knee up with his golf club. Next thing we know they have killed the dog and are calmly explaining to the family that within 12 hours they will all be 'kaput'. Meanwhile they will play 'funny games'...

It's hard to evaluate this film but one thing is straightforward. Its execution is simply brilliant. Haneke's direction is stunningly clever and inventive. While the film is almost unwatchably horrible, we see almost no violence. Terrible violence indeed occurs but for the worst of it the camera is always pointed elsewhere. However this is done in such a way that this only seems to enhance the horror. A sense of almost unbearable tension is brilliantly established and maintained. And the acting is altogether exceptional. In particular this is true of Susanne Lothar who turns in a truly astonishing performance. And there are few films where we find more terrifyingly menacing performances than Giering and Frisch deliver here. Forget Perkins' Bates and Hopkins' Lecter. Both seem pretty harmless compared to these guys.

The difficulty is in trying to make any kind of sense of what we are seeing. What on earth, we wonder as the film unfolds, is Haneke playing at putting this stuff on film at all? What we are shown is so indescribably horrible that we are left wondering what excuse there could be for making such a film. Is it just sick and nasty, like the killers it depicts. Or is there some serious purpose and, if so, what might it be?

I think we can say that there is. We're used to films about violence and we like them. We like them for complex reasons. A central one is articulated in the classic explanation of why we like detective stories. Such stories remind us that we live in a dangerous world, our personal safety rendered fragile by the presence of murderous dispositions in some of those we share a world with. It shouldn't be fun to be reminded of that but such stories also offer crucial reassurance. They show us a world where evil is defeated. Where there is always a good, wise policeman relentlessly and inexorably seeking justice, catching the bad guys and putting the moral order back neatly into place. In other kinds of violence film other kinds of people save us. Tough guys played by Bruce Willis or Sean Connery save the day and beat the baddies off. Or sometimes it is the ordinary decent folk themselves find, under pressure, resources enough in themselves to win out against the bad guys. Sometimes too, the bad guys, or some of them turn out not so bad. Humanity breaks through and they discover there are moral boundaries they can't cross. We see both these latter consolations, for example, in David Fincher's recent, far more mainstream, home invasion thriller 'Panic Room'. Here there are none of these. There are no good guys with the resources to restore the civilized order. The baddies are utterly pitiless. There is nowhere to go except degradation and death. There are moments of resourcefulness on the part of the victims but we are just being teased. No one is going to wake up in the safe hands of kind doctors and the police. The audience's expectations from a thriller of this kind are repeatedly teased, manipulated and subverted.

Whatever else we say about this movie, it doesn't glamorize violence. So many violent movies give us the poetry and the ballet of violence: choreographed aestheticized combat, sometimes in slow motion. Haneke moves to the opposite extreme. This is the ordinary reality of violence, hateful and ugly. (If you find this film offensive and obscene but think "Kill Bill" is cool you aren't thinking very well.) And, most terrible tease of all, in the midst of its unrelenting depiction of evil and cruelty it also shows us tenderness. Most notably in an extraordinary moment where the desperate Georg and Anna, temporarily left alone by Peter and Paul who have done so much to degrade and destroy them share a fleeting moment of tenderness as Anna reassures Georg that she blames him for none of what has happened.

There is, then, I suspect, enough here by way of intelligent purpose here to justify the ordeal that Haneke subjects the audience to. But it's certainly not for everyone. Here's a suggestion if you're unsure. Some people loved a movie like 'Se7en', say, for its brilliantly exercised, darkly intelligent meditation on evil. Some people hated it, thinking it so dark there could be no conceivable pleasure in watching it and so no point in watching it for if movies are not to entertain us what are they for? If you find yourself in the latter category, avoid this film like the plague. It's not for you and you'll hate every second of it. But if you find yourself in the former category, maybe give it a try. It's altogether harrowing but quite extraordinary and you won't forget it in a hurry.

This movie disturbed me. American suspense writers should watch this film. Blood and gore don't scare, a good story does. A great addition to your DVD collection if you can handle a story about the darker side of the human psyche.

I saw this movie a little while ago and it really makes a mark on you, it doesn't horrify you with blood and gore so much as it horrifies you with the feeling that the killers are out to kill you, the speaking to the audience made me feel like they were giving you the same common courtesy they gave the family. All in all I liked this film and i would recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind seeing the terrible demise of a happy family.

Haneke thinks he's made an anti-violence movie. No. He has made one of the most effective horror movies of all time.

What he is trying to tell us is that violence feels bad, a sentiment that may seem obvious, but that is often contradicted by Hollywood. He has several tricks that he employs that draw the viewer into the film which are extremely effective. I have read reviews in which it was stated that the intent was to make the viewer feel complicit in the violence - as if the only correct way to respond to the movie is to walk out. I beg to differ. The audience is abused by the film maker as much as the victims in his film. It is truly clever and very unsettling and it makes for great horror. He also focuses on the repercussions of violence much more than on the violence itself. The most harrowing scene in the film is basically a long still shot across a room of a mother's intense grief. Oh yeah, Susanne Lothar has got to be one of the best sctresses that has ever lived.

What Haneke is not taking into account is that some people really enjoy a movie that can make them feel bad. I really don't think that he knows what he made. This is real horror. Real horror makes you think; it gets inside you. I enjoyed being the brunt of Haneke's joke. I can take a joke. And I'll be damned if I will feel bad about liking this movie - even if the guy that made it wants me to.