Review of Funny Games (1997) by Kevork O — 22 Mar 2012

A confined and disconcerting film that occasionally leaves you floundering as the filmmaker's desire to fuck with your head takes over. The film follows an old premise, and is genuinely quite frightening, but its innovation lies in the inclusion of us the audience behind the safety of our 4th wall and the ability of the characters within to change the outcomes of the story by simply pressing rewind and having another go at a scene.

These devices hurt the intensity of the plot, but ultimately define the thematic of this film and because they are used so sparingly we are not distracted for long - Haneke fully aware that our need as an audience is to re-engage with the conventional structures of filmmaking as quickly as possible.

Haneke's films occasionally suffer from their own cleverness and his insistence on using stupidly long statics, but his way of choreographing dramatic tension is nothing short of genius, and this film is laden with terrific scenes and a creepy nihilistic tone.