[sral]

Funny Games

I'll admit, i had never heard the term 'home invasion' prior to this film. But that's precisely what this film is about... Sort of. A family arrive for a vacation at this villa out of town. Two of the locals arrive who seem a little strange and overly keen to help. Through a short series of events early on, the families dog gets killed and the father is hit to the kneecap with a golf club that breaks his leg. The family are forced to sit on a sofa inside the villa by the two young locals, and that's where the film really starts.

As more is revealed about the two strange locals holding the family hostage, we find out that both are junkies that go around the villas looking for things to steal to buy drugs - and that one was molested as a child. Nothing too strong then, eh?

Well, amongst all this, the victims are bound and gagged, the families young son has a plastic bag placed over his head and visibly struggles to breathe in a game of 'cat in the bag' where the wife is made to strip in order to save the son. She complies. The two twenty-something's torturing them tell the family they'll all be dead within twelve hours, and there's a glimmer of hope when the young son escapes to a neighbouring villa, pursued by one of the killers, but we quickly discover this family are all dead, too. The little boy finds a shotgun and points it at the killer who's followed him... but the gun has no bullets in. The boy is quickly disarmed and led back to the holiday villa with his family. Once back at the villa, there's a scene where the mother grabs for the (now loaded by one of the killers) shotgun and shoots one of them dead. The killer hits a rewind button and as the movie starts the scene again, the killer doesn't die. Instead they shoot the child and his blood is left splattered all across the villas TV. Talk about a plasma television, right?! You soon realise this isn't your typical Hollywood horror film where a happy ending awaits. The two remaining parents then attempt an escape, only to later be tracked down, rebound up, and ultimately led to a boat which then sails out to sea and the bodies are dumped never to be found again. As the film closes, we see the killers knock the door of a new villa with a family inside, and implies the same process is repeated...

All in all this is a very well done movie. There are a few instances where the main killer talks directly I camera, which is well executed and almost gives you the feeling like you're an accomplice to the murder/torture in my opinion. The other thing i felt to point out is that there are two versions to this movie, one Austrian, and one a shot-for-shot exact remake called Funny Games US. The remake is copied scene for scene, however, if anyone feels like looking this up - I personally felt the original to be a little more haunting and overall more 'disturbing' which was the point in my original list. So although I didn't cover this and it's remake separately, my reasoning behind that is they're almost identical films albeit with different actors in the roles.

This is a great movie by one of my personal favourite directors, Ted Haneke, I'd recommend the Funny Games US version to people who aren't even horror fans. It's more a psychological thriller actually now I think of it. This one doesn't rate so highly on my disturbing list as others, maybe in concept it could, but it never really affected me in the same way as say... A Serbian Films ending or the turtle soup scene from Cannibal Holocaust. It certainly isn't for everybody, but I genuinely didn't find this one that bad. I was more disgusted at Human Centipede 2 in all honesty.