Funny Games

I found this movie heavy, right at the first moment Paul breaks the 4th wall by turning around to look back at the camera and wink at us while Anna is searching for the dead body of their dog or when the same character presents a bet to the family and then again breaks the 4th wall asking us what we think, if the family has a chance to survive? Of course we are on their side, aren’t we?  In a way taunting the audience because most people who watch these kind of movies expect to see violence and death. I personally took this film as a critique upon pointless violence in film and how we are so desensitized by violence, blood and torture in movies. Why are we alright with seeing people getting violently massacred on screen? We wouldn’t want to experience that in real life, not a normal person.  This movie barely shows any act of violence, most of it happens off screen, we can only hear and see the emotions of the characters which correlates to what they are witnessing. The only time we see graphic violence is when one of the intruders gets shot. Again giving false hope the audience making us believe that the family somehow will make it through just for the other intruder taking the remote and rewinding the movie preventing the situation and bringing us back to reality and also giving this message that real-world violence most of the times doesn’t end with a solution or salvation, not like in movies where a protagonist somehow manages to defeat the villain/killer.  Also the credits color scheme being inverted is such a nice touch, for me it felt as if it was saying „Did you expect it to end the other way around?“