Tagline: You must admit, you brought this on yourself.
Michael Haneke (Caché) remakes his own 1997 horror-thriller about two psychopaths who kidnap a mother, father and son in their vacation cabin and make them play sadistic games with each other into English.
In this provocative and brutal thriller from director Michael Haneke, a vacationing family gets an unexpected visit from two deeply disturbed young men. Their idyllic holiday turns nightmarish as they are subjected to unimaginable terrors and struggle to stay alive. Remade from his own acclaimed 1997 film, “Funny Games” is written and directed by Michael Haneke (“Caché”), and stars Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet and Devon Gearhart.
Two families go to their summer homes and make a date to play golf the next morning. The neighbors’ guest shows up at Ann and George’s home requesting some eggs for Eva. Ann is not sure about the guest and things seem strange. The vacation begins with Ann, George and their son Georgie on their way to their summer home. The neighbors, Fred and Eva, are already there. They make a date to play golf the next morning. It’s a perfect day.
Ann begins to make dinner, while her husband and son are busy with their newly restored sailboat. Suddenly, Ann finds herself face to face with a polite young man, the neighbors’ guest Peter, who has come to ask for some eggs because Eva has run out. Ann is about to give Peter the eggs, but hesitates. How did he get onto their property? Peter explains that there’s a hole in the fence – Fred showed it to him. Things seem strange from the beginning. Soon, violence erupts.
Remake
Recently a friend and critic who recently watched FUNNY GAMES said to me “now the film is where it belongs.” He is right. When I first envisioned FUNNY GAMES in the middle of the 90s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American Cinema, its violence, its naïveté, the way American Cinema toys with human beings. In many American films violence is made consumable.
However, because it was a foreign language film and because the actors were not familiar to an American audience, it did not reach its audience. In 2005, British producer Chris Coen approached me with the idea to do a remake in English. I agreed under the condition that Naomi Watts star in the movie.
Review
So sadistic and disturbing, Games (* 1/2 out of four) is easily the toughest movie to sit through since 1994’s Natural Born Killers. Lured in to spy on the discreet terrors of the bourgeoisie, viewers don’t just watch — they viscerally recoil.
We are made to watch the mental and physical torture of a family (played by Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Devon Gearhart as their 10-year-old son) by preppy psychos clad in tennis whites (Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet). The film lacks character development and motivation or any sense of psychological examination of the casual cruelty inflicted by the pair. The family’s only sin: that they are moneyed and own a lakefront vacation home that is relatively remote.
It’s a sick and twisted tale intended to provoke and disturb. Austrian writer/director Michael Haneke, who adapted this from his 1997 German-language film, has said it’s a commentary on how violence is made consumable in American movies, swallowed easily by naive audiences. It’s an interesting rationale, but what he puts on the screen feels much more exploitative than reflective. While Haneke is attacking our culture for being drawn to violent fare, he is also relishing in presenting it to us, in prolonged and detailed fashion.
The audience feels like a co-conspirator in this sadomasochistic excursion into extreme cruelty. One can’t help but leave the theater angry to have wasted time on this despicable, conscience-free exercise in pointless horror. — By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
Production notes provided by Warner Independent Pictures.
Funny Games
Starring: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Boyd Gaines, Siobhan Fallon, Devon Gearhart
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Screenplay by: Michael Haneke
Release Date: March 14th, 2008
MPAA Rating: R for terror, violence and some langauge.
Studio: Warner Independent
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $1,294,919 (17.9%)
Foreign:$5,942,192 (82.1%)
Total: $7,237,111 (Worldwide)