It’s in English (a first for director Michael Haneke), with a couple of well-known leads (both, curiously, non-Americans playing American characters) and some token, cosmetic changes to acknowledge the ten years that have passed since the original…but this almost shot-for-shot remake of the 1997 Austrian movie FUNNY GAMES is as harrowing and uncompromising as its predecessor, with zero concessions to the mainstream audience.
Haneke has stated his motives for making the same film sans subtitles, as an opportunity to give those audiences unwilling to watch a foreign language film the chance to willingly experience FUNNY GAMES. This seems bizarre given that it’s unlikely the audience he has in mind will appreciate a film which, as has been pointed out by its detractors, tells them off for liking violent films in the first place. The lecturing, borderline-condescending tone that dominated the 1997 film is here in abundance – but, if you can get past it, there’s a riveting movie to be found.
This time out, middle-class American couple Naomi Watts and Tim Roth and their young son (Devon Gearhart) are enjoying a break at their rural vacation home when they are greeted by a pair of polite, well-to-do, slightly effeminate young men (Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet) in tennis threads and white gloves. Initially requesting only to borrow some eggs, the duo soon reveal their true intent – to use the family as players in their cruel games – with the threat / promise that all three of them will be dead by the end of the night. We the audience expect and assume that the story will become a survivalist thriller in which the victimized fight back and the bad are punished. It doesn’t work out that way.
As before, FUNNY GAMES U.S. is a nihilistic feature-length subversion of the conventional home invasion horror-thriller. At every turn (including its open mocking of the clichéd back-stories of movie killers) it refuses to pander to expectations or deliver generic thrills. It is also a vastly unsubtle, overriding commentary on movie violence : following in the footsteps of HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and MAN BITES DOG (amongst others), it acknowledges the audience’s bloodlust and, by extension, implicates us in the on-screen horrors. Haneke is at his most playful as he regularly breaks the fourth wall via Pitt’s character : just as he controls the escalating situation in the house, Pitt is unnervingly in control of the movie too, talking straight to the audience and, in the most gimmicky post modern touch, rewinding a key violent scene (in fact, the onscreen violence in the film) so that his partner in crime lives. We the audience are even denied the vicarious thrill of seeing a villain die gruesomely.
Haneke’s technique – however you feel about his attitude – is enormously effective in sustaining an uncomfortable mood. There’s no conventional music score : the only music we hear are bursts of jarringly juxtaposed Handel / Vivaldi and some anonymously shrieking death metal. Giving us time to reflect on the downer ending, the credits roll in an appropriately somber / shocked silence.
If elements of the villains’ costumes immediately echo A CLOCKWORK ORANGE – also a movie about violence in modern culture – Haneke’s style is fittingly Kubrickian : as a director, he couldn’t be any icier or more distanced from the audience he frequently chastises. Long takes that seem to have no end, static cameras that goad us into wanting to see around the fixed image…this is a “thriller” that refuses to look or feel like a thriller.
Indeed, while the central scenario is genuinely suspenseful, nothing – with the exception of ironically named family dog “Lucky” dying first – goes the way we anticipate. Man of the house Roth is seriously wounded early on and unable to move without agonizing pain – unusually, he’s the character who falls apart emotionally first. The key moments of brutal confrontation occur off-camera, depriving us of what, to some extent, we have come along to see. This approach enhances the wrenching impact of the plot’s most shocking development : a lingering shot of a blood-spattered television set conveys a callous act of brutality as effectively as any graphic onscreen depiction could.
This remake is exceptionally well cast. Roth and Watts, both in a state of heightened distress throughout, are extraordinarily good. Roth underplays in the more reactive role while Watts is upsetting to watch as a woman who suffers humiliation, physical abuse and life-ruining loss all in the space of one night. The two memorably effete sociopaths, who refer to each other as Beavis and Butthead (Outdated Cultural Reference Alert!), are hauntingly well played by a charismatic yet smugly odious Pitt and the dangerous but weak-willed Corbet. They are respectable looking spoiled brats who just happened to grow up to be sadistic, amoral weirdo’s.
The U.S. backdrop has done nothing to mute Haneke’s distinctive art house sensibility and the unremitting bleakness of the 1997 film has been retained. FUNNY GAMES in either of its incarnations is undeniably pretentious and Haneke’s views on movie violence are questionable at best, patronizing and simplistic at worst. There is, however, no denying the impact of this new version, which offers a rough ride for any audience from start to pessimistic finish.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
