If you know even a little about the premise of Funny Games - you start dreading what you are going to witness from the first frame itself. This fact alone is a commentary on how violence, and the expectation of violence has seeped into our consciousness - almost to a point where we dread its occurrence, its percolation into our own lives, and yet voyeuristically enjoy it through films, games, and the omnipresent media. Michael Haneke splits opinion on this movie right across the middle - The premise is simple and well-known; two psychotic young men take a family hostage while they are out vacationing in the Hamptons, and start their “games” that conclude to a horrible ending. Note the words - horrible, psychotic, and games.

The two young men aren’t the only ones playing games here, Haneke himself plays games on the viewer  through the medium of film with this movie. Ann Farber (skilfully played by Naomi Watts), and George Farber (Tim Roth) are out on a vacation with their young son. It’s a perfect cookie cutter upper class American family; a home in the Hamptons, classical music in the car, a dog, a sailboat. All is well yet there is a feeling of dread as the slow somnolent classical music is suddenly ripped apart by the hell-hound band Naked City’s Bonehead. And then it begins.

The family’s simple vacation is abruptly interrupted by two seemingly well-bred young men who barge into their house asking for some eggs, and refuse to leave. It starts with them physically attacking George using a golf club, and degenerates into multiple sadistic games, where they bet with the weary, exhausted, and mentally terrified family that none of them will be alive beyond 9:00 am the next morning. “Why don’t you just kill us?” asks a fatigued and embittered Anne to Peter, one of the men, who replies with a curt smile- “You shouldn’t forget the importance of entertainment.” Time and again, Haneke reminds us with such lines of what we are being subjected to - gross entertainment. Haneke takes the psychotic thriller genre so often reproduced in Hollywood (Saw 1, 2, 3, 4 ad infinitum, Hostel, Friday the 13th), twists it upon itself and asks the viewer whether we desire more entertainment - lascivious voyeurism disguised in the form of a game, news, or a silly movie.

In the scene where the two men bet with the family that they won’t survive beyond the coming morning, one of the men, Paul (played superbly by Michael Pitt) breaks the fourth wall, and mockingly asks the viewer whether they are still praying for the family to survive. Terrifyingly, we are. Haneke uses this device multiple times in the movie to mock and frustrate the audience, to shake them off the dream that everything might just be alright - it will not.

At one  scene, Anne lunges at the shotgun and manages to shoot and kill Peter. Paul, outraged, confiscates the shotgun, and starts looking for the TV remote. He manages to “reverse” this entire sequence, grabs the gun from Anne before she could kill Peter, and after taunting Anne that she should not be breaking rules, shoots her husband dead. This scene is extremely outraging, and makes one wish that he/she could lunge into the movie and stop it all from happening; stop Peter and Paul from twisting space and time to suit themselves - it seems unfair and unreal;  Yet one cannot.

There are no happy endings in Funny Games. Peter and Paul take Anne out to the harbor the next day, and casually throw a tied Anne off-board into the icy waters, thus winning their one-sided bet. They then row over to another house, and the cycle restarts.

Funny Games is not only about sadistic games played by a pathetic bunch of twisted teens on unwary families, it is a game played by Haneke on his audience - An entire joke on American movie-making which often celebrates blood, gore and black-and-white-wars. I think why many people dislike Funny Games is not because it resembles Hostel, Saw or other similar movies.  Funny Games is far from them, since there is barely any scene of blood or gore in the entire movie. Instead, I reckon, people cannot face the fact that the movie mocks them, asks them whether they can pray for a good resolution, a clean happy ending, a walk into the sunset -  while  it calmly takes them away from those aspirations and replaces them with an endless cycle of cold, depressing deadly, games - exactly what all of us appreciate and patronize in the ticket sales.

Watch the movie for Naomi Watts’ performance, and the two terrifying performances by Michael Pitt (Paul) and his awkward sidekick played by Brady Corbet (Peter). And stop looking for a motive behind these psychotic games, there is none. Isn’t that what we all started too? An unjustified war.

Watch a trailer for the film here: