Funny Games [DVD]

By Clint Morris

When I say ‘’Funny Games’’ is a ‘bloody horrible’ movie – I don’t mean in a ‘directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer’ way. I say ‘horrible’ because it’s one of the most unsettling and disturbing pieces of cinema I’ve sat through in some time (imagine it’s a blackout, you go to the laundry looking for a torch, and look up to see a goblin staring back at you through the window; it’s that chilling); so ‘horrible’ in fact, that I near grabbed the wife’s asthma pump to pump some air back into me after it finished. Oliver Stone’s ‘’Natural Born Killers’’ has a couple of moments in it that don’t go down well with a newly-eaten beef taco, and Rich Linklater’s Anti-Maccas movie ‘’Fast Food Nation’’ evokes mass vomiting with its cow-slicing finale, but ‘’Funny Games’’? It just straight-up rattles you.

For a film to be able to do that, it must be pretty darn good I say.

A shot-for-shot remake of his Austrian film of the same name, Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” centres on a peaceful family (Naomi Watts is Mom, Tim Roth is Dad, Devon Gearhart is the 10-year-old son), holidaying at a lake house, who find themselves held hostage by two freakishly-weird teenagers (all dressed in white), played by Michael Pitt (in a role not too far distanced from the one he played in the Sandra Bullock film “Murder by Numbers”) and Brady Corbet. The boys don’t seem to have any motive, just a clear-cut plan to use and abuse the clan. They’re also convinced that by 9am the next morning, the family will be dead.

This is a piece of art. The direction is amazing, the performances are top-notch, and the pot-boiling pace is pitch-perfect. The film totally throws out the kidnapping-movie rule book …. And to say any more than that, will ruin its biggest surprises.

The film will no doubt be ridiculed by some it is pretty much just violent for violent’s sake – it also goes against the grain of essentially letting the kidnappers control the fort from begging to end – and as I said, there are some pretty ghastly moments in the movie, but if you can stomach a bit of raw sausage, you can stomach this. And just to remind us that we are watching a movie, the fourth-wall is broken in a couple of scenes, so one of the kidnappers can address the audience, asking what we would like to see. Further, if even just to remind us that we’re not watching the same old – same old, the same character later stops (literally) a scene that has gone wrong – one of the boys gets his comeuppance finally – grabs a TV remote and rewinds the film back a few minutes so they can replay that scene… and this time, do it his way.

A peculiar beast, but a brilliantly disconcerting one, “Funny Games” is frighteningly first-rate.

Extras

Nothing but a trailer?