Review of Funny Games (1997) by Horcrux2007 — 02 Jul 2015

This movie was listed in the 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die, so here I am. Funny Games is an Austrian thriller about an affluent family who are held captive in their house by two young men that force them to play sadistic games for their own amusement.

Funny Games isn't really worried about a conventional story. The point of this movie is to satirize people's obsession with watching extreme violence in cinema and the pleasure they may get from that.

While the movie itself isn't terribly violent, it's somewhat disturbing and has an incredibly morbid sense of humor. One of the young men, Paul, frequently interacts with the audience and breaks the fourth wall.

About an hour into the movie, he tells the family that they haven't been killed yet since they're "not up to feature film length yet." He also asks the viewer their opinion about if the family will win a certain game or if they want to see even more violence.

There's even a scene towards the end involving a remote control that completely destroys traditional storytelling and shows two different outcomes for the same game. I don't want to say much more than that since it's such a clever scene.

As a lecture about the obsession of violence in cinema, it's a very striking and memorable film, while as a thriller, it's an unpredictable and visceral roller coaster until the very last shot. It's a movie everyone needs to watch.