Funny Games: When Meta Meets Psychopaths
Hello one and all! For this week’s movie club we have the metal thriller Funny Games.
FUNNY GAMES
DIRECTOR: Michael Haneke
STARRING: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Devon Gearhart
GENRE: Psychological Thriller
YEAR: 2007
COUNTRY: United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy
In this exploration of our violent society and how depictions of violence reflect and shape our culture, a middle-class 
family submits both physically and mentally to the torture, violence, and death foisted upon them by two young, unexpected, white-gloved visitors at their vacation retreat near a lake.
This is film is definitely one that I wasn’t planning on watching, but y’all requested it so here it is. The film is held up by strong performances from the main cast and an interesting take on the hostage/break in genre. The best achievement Funny Games was able to gain was to completely encase itself in meta. The films characters acknowledge that they are in a film, talk about plot structure, as well as have an entire scene designated to all of this meta. But I’m not going to ruin it for you this time.
Haneke wants the Americans who have made Hostel and Saw such hits to see this movie and renounce their love of horror, but the only people who will see this and stay the whole way through are film critics, who will be fascinated by Haneke’s use of style and possibly sucked in by his message. Funny Games is a movie that lives and dies on its gimmick, and when you figure out that all it’s doing is toying with us, there’s nothing left worth watching.
PROS:
- Meta.
- Main caster performances.
- Interesting take on Hostage genre.
CONS:
- Horror?
- Toys with the audience.
- Only has its gimmick for merit.
SCORE: 6.0 / 10
If you have any suggestions for films/TV/Games/Music/Anime for me to review, drop me a comment!
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All check out my lengthier video game reviews over at Nerd Bacon Games.
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