Funny Games

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Funny Games

85% Liked It
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Funny Games

Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering, Stefan Clapczynski

A psychological thriller about an innocent family as they stumble upon a holiday in hell: Anna, George and their son arrive at their lovely lakeside home on vacation and meet a strange and demanding y...( read more  read more... )oung man--a guest of their neighbors''--who turns out to have rather violent tendencies.

Id: 10908986

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Funny Games Recent Reviews
  • SirPant
    October 23, 2009
    SirPant
    This is a real poke in the eye and a two fingered salute to Hollywood. Good! Funny Games is not a particularly original story, that's kind of the point, it's been done many a time before but not quite like this. The beginning sequence?s music (the only part of the film with music...( read more)) suggests that there is a much darker side to this film. This is pure horror but this isn't a horror film in the sense that it's all blood and guts, you actually never see any of the violence, Peter and Paul are actually more frightening when you don't see them. It?s really questioning how far is too far, both as a film and also as a society. We all know there are some real sick people out there, there are some real sick films out there too to be honest, Haneke is suggesting that the media should take some responsibility for this. A bit contradictory? That?s where it gets clever, the interaction with the audience from one of the bad guys shouldn?t have worked but it does, brilliantly. For example, Paul says the line "We're not up to feature film length yet" at exactly the 95-minute mark of the movie. He also rewinds the film when the film starts to go down a familiar ?Hollywood? style road and continues the film with even more cruelty and brutality. Often awkward to watch but at the same time technically brilliant (Not many directors film 10 minute takes!) Funny Games is a breath of fresh air and a kick in the ass to modern cinema. My kind of film. Why he remade it into English, I have no idea but I won?t comment until I see it! I suggest those of you interested should watch this one, the original, first though!
  • stopitgoaway
    July 17, 2009
    stopitgoaway
    First things first, Michael Haneke HATES Quentin Tarantino's films. He hates the way violence and death are shown as being 'cool' - Cool gangsters executing their enemies whilst saying cool lines (And you will know, that my name is the Lord! etc,etc)with a cool song playing in th...( read more)e background. This is not how violence is in the real world, violence is a horrible fact of life, not a glamourous thing for youths to copy but I like Tarantino, and I think Haneke intended Funny Games to show it how it really is. I watched Funny Games without the slightest clue what the film was about, so I just had to sit back and take it as it comes. At first, I wasn't too impressed. I thought the scenes were too long and dragged out, yet at the same time, I felt a strange feeling of suspense. The incredibly long camera shots leave you that bored, that you think "Something bad is going to happen soon, I can tell...". The suspense also lasts right through the film 'til the very end. You don't want to watch it, but at the same time, you feel hypnotised by it.

    I will not detail any events of the film, to save spoiling the atmosphere, but I will note one thing that people tend to be confused about:- "Why did the family let them into the house in the first place?" The two characters of Peter and Paul are let to walk all over the family because of one flaw in the bourgios psyche - 'The more polite a person is, the better a person they are.' This absurd way of thinking is played on by Peter and Paul and they obviously score, plus 'getting into the house without breaking in' is also one of their 'games'.For those who haven't seen the film, I definitely wouldn't recommend this for a night in with the parents/girlfriend, but I definitely would for people who want to see the difference between death and Tarantino-glam. Prepare for a highly suspenseful yet sickeningly violent, non-Hollywood, edge-of-the-seat piece of art.
  • SarahG1988
    August 24, 2008
    SarahG1988
    Director:Michael Haneke Released: 1997
    Stars:Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Muhe, Arno Frisch and Frank Giering
    Genre: Drama, Thriller
    Country: Austria




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    Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.

    Funny Games is another one of those films everybody bare me has seen. Finally I found it in my supermarket this afternoon and just finished watching it. I have to admit that it toally blew me away. Funny Games is far more than a Horror, it's also a depiction of just how often Media violence is in our society and how much we take it for granted and almost let ourselved be entertained by this. Pure genuis!

    The film opens up with a helicopter shot of the family arriving at their holiday home on the motorway. While watching this we are shown just how close the family, setting us up for one hell of a ride. This voyeristic technique makes us wonder why we are sitting here watching this and almost feel slightly instrusive on the family. That's the genuis of Haneke. I must admit that I didn't go too much on Hidden but this is abosolutly amazing. I can see some similarities in the two films there.

    I know a lot of people will either love or hate this film I can see why but there are many different menaings to this film. For instance as I said beofre why, as a viewer you are sitting down to watch this and also questioning the viewing public as a whole. It also shows us parts which you might not fully be shown in an American film and almost plays upon that. Haneke uses emotions of the family almost as bait. The two men constantly play upon why the couple are crying and feeling this way and twisting it for their own amusement. There's no manipulation here as you might often find in a US film, you are given the opotunity to switch off, as one character says and question just how much violence you can take. Which I think is why this film is NOT pointless as some people have written here.

    The characterisation in Funny Games is brilliant and key to the viewers understanding of the film. Both of the two main leads; Anna and Georg Snr are a middle class couple and very likeable indeed. As a viewer you can instantly releate to them and their son Georg. The film's path is not what you would expect as you really do warm to the characters. Oddly the representation of the two men: Paul and Peter are ones of such charm and sophistication that you don't feel that they're the villian on some stages. I'm going to admit that I did find the character of Paul very attractive indeed and didn't for a second think anything less-but that's another story entirely! Incidently Peter is also a man full of charm but is presented as less intelligent and an odd character.-we see this when Peter continuously calls him "fatty" which he hates.

    Funny Games is also intelligently written and well paced. 1 hr and 40 mins flew by and left me utterly speechless afterwards, which of course is genuis on Haneke's part. Funny Games cleverly plays with the conventions of filmaking and asks the audience:

    We're not up to feature film length yet. You want a real ending with plausible plot development".

    Also has Paul looking at the camear and talking to the audience, which also gives the character as sense of arrogance to him and almost tells the audiene that he's in charge. What was the most clever thing about this film was the re-wind scene which did leave me slightly disturbed at what I had just watched.

    Funny Games is one of the most disturbing films that I have seen and so cleverly written and filmed it's unbelievable. It'll leave you feeling horrified at what you've just watched and leave you wondering the why you watch violence in the media. Funny Games is a clever film and one which I highly recomend.
  • Stinger839
    August 21, 2008
    Stinger839
    Better than its remake by a sliver. Slower (hard for that to be possible) than its tightened remake, and at times does feel a little more clunkily directed in this static shot style (as in the director didn't have 10 years to plan every single shot). All the acting is better to m...( read more)e. The actor playing the mom is more convincing and these kids are genuine fully developed psychos whereas the remake kids feel like little pricks without any psychological depth. I watched these in reverse order, the remake first. I regret that because it makes it difficult for me to like again the same shots I liked from the first version I saw (most notable is when the wife ventures into the road at night to hail a car for help). The differences are very minute between this and the remake in terms of dialogue and shot composition. The lack of gore is the same, but the shotgun shell to Paul's chest looks more natural as it was not CGIed. It's too similar to its remake to really warrant a thorough breakdown. I'll say that I'm artificially more inclined to take Haneke's message in this movie more seriously because it is in another spoken language
    (I have a strong anti-Hollywood bias). The main thing is the two bad rich kids; this version of them is just way more intimidating. I feel like they are an embodiment of mindless middle class cravings for violence, whereas the actors in the remake look like they'd be down and out after one lame punch because that's how flaccid they are as a representation of sadism.
  • kiriyamakazou
    August 3, 2008
    kiriyamakazou
    Michael Haneke's disturbing suburban nightmare is one of the most uneasy and unapologetically depraved films you will ever see. Haneke first decides to make the film contain virtually no violence, that is to say the majority happens off screen. The film suggests that all violence...( read more), even fictional, may have a negative affect. In fact in many ways fictional violence can be more destructive than real life violence on the news, as film-makers and writers can selectively present emotional situations to build a connection. Funny Games also engages its audience by breaking the fourth wall, asking us questions personally. It works surprisingly well and happens so out of the blue creates even more uncomfortable situations. The climax is simply perfect, giving us the ending we all want and then tearing it away from us. Heart-pounding and fucking terrifying.
  • wiccanwitch2010
    January 7, 2010
    wiccanwitch2010
    i loved this as a kid and i still love it to this day
  • LTAlan
    December 30, 2009
    LTAlan
    Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" is one of the few movies i enjoyed because of its uniqueness. Knowing that Haneke does not like violence to be portrayed as "cool", i was a little surprised by the content. However, when Arno Frisch's character started talking towards us, the viewe...( read more)rs, that's when i saw Hanekes way to mock the gratuitous violence in some of new films. He makes the viewers feel, in a way, as being accomplices of the violent events that are happening to the family in the film.

    A pretty good film that i enjoyed overall, but i would mainly recommend this one to film scholars. I believe that the rest of the people will find this film boring.
  • xobabygreekox
    December 19, 2009
    xobabygreekox
    I hated the new one, maybe the REAL one is better
  • siavashasadollahi
    November 24, 2009
    siavashasadollahi
    watching this movie was a hard and yet joyful time. those psychopaths were astonishing. loved it.
  • dfwforeignbuff
    November 23, 2009
    dfwforeignbuff
    Georg & Anna, & their son Georgie, are traveling to their lakeside summer home. Upon arrival, Georg and Georgie head off to the lake for sailing while Anna prepares dinner in the kitchen. The serenity is shattered by a young man named Peter, who knocks at the door asking to borro...( read more)w some eggs. The unwanted visitor is joined by Paul, a brash, arrogant young man. It soon becomes clear the pair has no intention of leaving. When Georg returns and tries to throw them out, physical violence erupts, and the family is held captive. What ensues are highly disturbing and violent games that are initiated by Paul and Peter with Georg, Anna, and Georgie as the unwilling participants. Director Haneke Made an American remake of this in 2007. Violence for violence sake does not a good movie make!! Wow now I am a poet. The movie is about media-violence, why it exists and why we should think deeper about it. The two sociopaths in this movie are representing the viewer, as are the victims. "Why are you doing this to yourselves?", the torturers constantly ask. Why are they entertaining themselves by killing and torturing people? Why we are watching it, is the real question. At one point the punk perpetrator even looks straight at the camera and blinks his eye - inviting the staggered viewer to join this warped madness. Peter and Paul literally wink at the cameras, inviting our complicity. I think it is an ok movie. It is well made and edited. It is also very disturbing and upsetting, it's not MY FAVORITE KIND OF FILM. It is a highly suspenseful yet sickeningly violent, non-Hollywood, edge-of-the-seat piece of TRASH MOVIE art. NY Times: " Posing as a morally challenging work of art, the movie is a really a sophisticated act of cinematic sadism" Haneke has made some other challenging movies. His movie The Piano teacher-a dreadfully good movie that affected me deeply. He also made Cache a very interesting movie style wise but it lost me via delivery of the plot. Haneke is such a technical virtuoso, so skilled at camerawork and framing, atmosphere and mood, that it's easy not to see that he's aiming beyond the boundaries of ordinary narrative. Haneke himself comments that "Funny Games" -- intended as an indictment of the audience appetite for violence -- has itself become a cult movie among horror fans in English-speaking countries. He has made an "anti-Tarantino film as far as the violence is concerned as this violence is not glamorized and glossy. Haneke is difficult as a film maker/director you will either love his movies or hate them. . Haneke has isolated a unique kind of violence vastly different to mainstream movie screen violence (emotionally and psychologically)." To me, this rather defeats the purpose, because we are let off the hook; this is something OTHER. Worse, perhaps. This is extreme cruelty, and presented as coming from a psychological nothingness. It is however a brilliant horror film in itself, as a dissection of what makes a horror film effective, on the compelling nature of screen violence, its distancing of one from reality, and the troubling reactions they provoke in the viewer. Viewed in a certain light, Funny Games is a slightly more devious, infinitely more subtle version of Man Bites Dog, the morbidly funny Dutch film about a documentary crew that follows a poetry-reciting serial killer along on his deadly rounds. Funny Games knows quite well that its audience has seen infinite variations of the Reservoir Dogs/True Crime/Natural Born Killers troika. Haneke is asking us, in an underhanded way, to appraise our role as viewers. Do we sympathize with the family, or do we secretly want to see them tortured? It's a heady argument, and one that Haneke never really presses us too hard on. Few viewers will have time to ponder such questions between bouts of nail-biting and eye-covering. Reserve such debates for the after-movie coffee clutch. The violence in this movie turned me off but I still give it 3 stars; this film is considered a cult classic by many.
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