Funny Games

“Is that enough? But you want a real ending with plausible plot development, don’t you?”. It’s one of those films you see once and never again, a real art piece of anxiety inducing, and hopeless cinema. The performances are phenomenal, what makes it so powerful is the emotionless vibe you get off of Paul. While the films called Funny Games I only laughed a few times though; so wasn’t that funny. Still can’t believe how genius the writing and style this film was. It’s done so magnificently to an extent to feel so disturbing and harrowing with little gore, jump scares, or even scenes of graphic violence. What makes the film so challenging to watch for me is the dialogue, which is elegantly executed by the incredible Arno Frisch. Then there’s the dragging out of scenes, it has this such uncanny and bleak feeling, mostly being the famous aftermath of kitty in the bag sequence.  Funny Games does a lot of things well, for a start it’s one of the best examples of anxiety inducing pieces of cinema like I previously stated. But it is in my opinion probably the BEST use of the famous genre…hopeless cinema. This includes of course having an empty feeling at the end of the film, no hope for anything, this film does this PERFECTLY. With its shocking ending, the remote scene, and most of all the 4th wall breaks. The scenes of him talking to us as a viewer is disturbing as hell, he’s talking to US, not a camera. The director of Funny Games does this choice in what I think is for an even more threatening/gut wrenching feeling. In ways it shows how this is his game, he makes the rules, he gets what he wants.  The ending is genius on continuing the cycle, straight from the beginning and you know what’s coming next. It makes you frightened of being kind, being overly welcome, and of course the last 4th wall break where he’s looking at you. Almost staring into your soul, it’s sickening and hard to watch, with heavy music playing in the back. You can’t help but feel uneasy at least. Funny Games is arguably one of the greatest films ever made, and the best to come from the horror genre in my opinion.