Funny Games

To be morbid is to be human. It’s that second glance you took at the dead bird decomposing on the sidewalk. It’s the itch in your brain telling you to hit play on the new gore shock video going viral even though you know what happens in it, and then telling you to hit rewind despite how genuinely disturbed you were when you saw it. It’s the way you couldn’t take your eyes off the car wreck as you drove down the highway, admiring the twisted metal as if you were going to find beauty in it. It’s even me trying to come up with more macabre scenarios to fill the introduction of this review. Morbidness is as core to our foundations as people as empathy and love, and Funny Games knows that all too well. Ever since humans have been able to translate thoughts into words, horror of some kind has existed. And when we became proficient at plastering it into works that could be preserved, such as books, plays and films, the potential for story-telling became practically boundless.It’s not clear what movie propelled horror cinema into the monolith of pop culture it is today; some might credit Pyscho, or Halloween, or a myriad other classics as the “starting point” for the horror blockbuster but what’s certain is that at some point, we realized something: It’s really fun to watch people die. Fictional people, of course, but the point still stands. Pain is entertainment. Pain sells. Obviously, I’m not exempt from this, after all, I love horror, and I am also a huge believer in the idea that enjoying violent art doesn’t make you a bad person, but I also believe that examining why and how the suffering of humans can be so exhilarating is imperative, not only in understanding ourselves but also in understanding horror as an art form. Now, many works of art have been made with the premise of “This thing hates you”. Think games like Dark Souls for example, but whilst Dark Souls creates an unforgiving world that seems like it despises you so that your rise to glory can be sweeter, Funny Games is the only work of art that I’ve ever seen that actually feels like it lives up to this description. The movie starts with a quiet car ride, classical music plays and as we go through these streets we start to get acquainted with our protagonists, a sweet-looking family playing a guessing game about music. Then the title card appears. No freeze frame, no cut, not a single embellishment. Just FUNNY GAMES on the center of the screen in blood red as an exceptionally loud metal song plays, a song which, as far as I know, is the only piece of non-diegetic music in the entire film, apart from its reappearance in the ending of course. This scene sets the mood for the film immediately and it builds tension throughout the peaceful beginning section of the movie, as we anticipate the inevitable. The family arrive, get comfortable, and the men go to prepare the boat as the mother gets ready to prepare some food. This is all filmed exceptionally well, with long, still frames that ache and stretch until they physically can’t anymore, which immediately lend the film identity. Everything is peaceful. Some of the lines the family exchange can even be funny and the atmosphere overall is pleasant. And then he arrives. A young white man. Can’t be older than 25. Completely normal in his appearance though maybe a bit… strange in demeanor. He asks for some eggs for a friend of the family and Anna, the mother, complies. You don’t need to be a film scholar to know what is going to happen next, after all, you knew what you were getting into, and Funny Games doesn’t really deviate from its set path to surprise the audience, and the story stays relatively predictable for the most part, until a certain scene far away from now. What makes this film stand tall as, without a doubt, the most horrifying movie I’ve ever seen isn’t the plot, it’s the way it unfolds. Every word that comes out of Peter’s mouth is suspect. The audience is wary of him from minute zero, and director Michael Haneke uses that to his advantage in these previously mentioned still frames, which make his conversation with Anna in the kitchen immensely awkward. After Peter receives the eggs, breaks them, and makes Anna give him more, a new face rears in: Paul. Anna finds both men waiting for the family dog to stop clawing at the door so that they can get out, and so, Anna drives him away, only to realize that the dog startled Peter, causing him to break the eggs. Yet they still demand more. Paul specifically starts to get weirdly insistent, until he notices a bag of fancy golf clubs and asks permission to try them, and so he goes outside to do so.Anna grows angry at the boys and eventually calls her husband, who initiates a scuffle as tensions between the family and the boys continue to grow. It culminates when, after George slaps Paul across the face, Peter uses one of the clubs to hit him in the leg, breaking it.They are not in their own house anymore, from now on Paul and Peter are in control. As the first game starts to materialize, we know what’s going to happen. We realized the incessant barking of the dog stopped shortly after Paul went outside, and we watch agonizingly as he leads Anna in a cringe inducing hot-or-cold search for the target of his practice swing, a target we already know, just based on what type of movie this is, but as she approaches the car and is about to open the door, something unexpected happens. Paul suddenly turns around, looks directly into the screen, not at the camera, he looks at you, watching the movie, complicit by association, and he just gives a knowing smirk, and a smug wink. When I first watched this scene a few hours ago, chills ran down my spine and a sense of dread carved its way through my body and placed itself so deep in my heart I’m not sure its fully gone even though I finished my first viewing of this movie about 6 hours ago. It comes out of nowhere and until it happens again, it doesn’t affect the plot at all. And so, the movie goes on, as the men make a bet with the family:“You bet that you’ll be alive tomorrow at 9:00, we bet that you’ll be dead.”The family, naturally, refuse to take part in these bets and so, once again, Paul turns around:“What do you think? You think they’ve a chance of winning? You’re on their side, aren´t you?”This line shook me to my core, but in my opinion, it presents a valid question, are you on their side? The obvious answer screams yes but then again, you did press play knowing what kind of movie this was. How much are you personally to blame for the brutality on display in front of you? As the movie goes on, the horrifying answer becomes clear as day. It’s your fault. You chose to entertain yourself at the expense of human beings suffering, whether they are “fictional” or “real” is not important here. You chose to start the movie and enduring the rest of this bloodless spectacle of dread is your punishment. Everything feels too real. And the worst part? It’s completely out of your control. You can’t even see the violence as it happens, having to conform with listening to screams of agony and absolute horror as the camera cuts away from what is truly going on, which just makes it even more terrifying. The games go on, as Anna is forced to strip to resolve a petty squabble between the psychopaths, whilst Georgie, the couple’s kid, has his head inside a pillow case.After Georgie runs away and is brought back home by Paul, in a scene that is as heartbreaking as it is terrifying, the men get ready to kill the first of the three, which will, of course, be decided by a game of chance.While this is all happening, we are not spectating. In fact, we are far away, in the kitchen, seeing Paul get something to eat, as we hear counting, then screaming, then a gunshot.Georgie tried to run away, as so he was shot by Peter. The killers lament that they won’t get any resistance from the fathers if their children is dead, and so they leave. Then comes the films longest single take scene, as Anna and George start to build a resolve to survive. For lack of a better word, this scene is just, heartbreaking. Beautifully acted and directed as the camera barely moves an inch and we are forced to take in the reality of what just happened, but of course, the killers came back, this is a horror flick after all. After they come back, in a scene that features the first and probably only time a golf ball has ever been horrifying, Paul and Peter have what is perhaps their most impactful dialogues in the movie, and as I first watched it, every single one of their lines that further confirmed they know they’re inside a movie felt like a needle going deeper and deeper in my heart until the sharp, uncontrollable fear was too much for me to handle without making noises. The fourth wall is a concept rooted in the idea that, if you were to film a four-wall room from one side, you’d see three walls and the fourth would be placed in the same place as the umbral that separates reality from fiction, but in Funny Games the fourth wall might as well be a tangible element of reality. It is so vivid and so truthful, which is what makes it all the worse every time Paul decides to turn on the lights in your room and remind you that he can see beneath the one-way mirror you’re standing behind. As he then comes to his reality to torment you even more. It begins after the golf ball rolls into view, as Paul walks into frame, he grabs it off the floor and tosses it, and it hits the lens, you can both hear and see how the ball bounces off of us from what should be thin air, and after this Paul simply shrugs and keeps on walking. After this they throw around comments like claiming that they “want to show the audience what they can do” and explaining that the torture can’t be over yet because “we haven’t arrived at feature length yet”. These drive the spectator mad, and, at least for me, had me wondering if maybe there was such a thing as a “haunted” movie, because, if there was, then I was watching it. Then, the last spoken fourth wall break happens, as Paul literally asks you: “Is that enough? You want more, don’t you?” This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You clicked on a movie that had the synopsis: “Two young men hold a family hostage in their vacation home and torture them with sadistic games.” You wanted to see this torture take place, and now you’re too uncomfortable to keep going?Funny Games hates that you are watching it. It constantly punishes you for even thinking that a movie centered around senseless violence would fill your need for entertainment, but nothing is as insulting to the audience as what happens next. In a moment of carelessness, Anna grabs a hold of the gun, and without hesitation, shoots Peter dead, after which Paul starts to truly lose his temper for the first and only time in the movie. He screams, and just when it looks like the couple might have a chance at survival, Paul grabs the TV’s remote control, then, he hits the rewind button and causes the movie itself to rewind back to right before Anna grabbed the gun. This is, without exaggeration, the most shocking thing I have seen in any movie ever. There is no hint of paranormality in this universe, even with Paul’s constant fourth wall breaks and even after the rewind there really isn’t any reason to think that what happened was “paranormal”. Paul simply rewound the movie, that’s all. This is the biggest way in which Funny Games betrays its audience without a care to what they’ll think about it and it speaks to a courage from Michael Haneke that I can only ever aspire to achieve. The torture goes on, eventually George is shot, Anna is brought to the boat and swiftly drowned one hour before the bet would actually end, finishing it anticlimactically. The audience doesn’t get anything but dread. No likable survivor at the end. No justice. No exciting finale. No moment to fight back. Just pain, and it all gets worse as Paul enters another house, and asks the question Peter asked at the beginning of the movie, eggs. Then, the film leaves us with one last image to linger with us after we turn it off. Right before Paul goes into the kitchen to get the eggs, he looks at us one last time, as the camera comes to a halt and the same metal song starts playing, It is all completely certain. That agony you just endured? That pain you just say all those people go through? That dread that crawled under your skin for almost two hours? It’s all going to happen again.