Tagline: You must admit, you brought this on yourself.
Funny Games movie storyline. George and Ann Farber, their son Georgie, and their dog Lucky arrive at their lake house. Their next-door neighbour, Fred, is seen with two young men, Peter and Paul. They find Fred reacting somewhat awkwardly. Fred and Paul come over to help put the boat into the lake. After they leave, George and Georgie stay outside by the lake, tending to their boat. Georgie asks his father why Fred was behaving so strangely.
While Ann is in the kitchen cooking, Peter comes by to borrow some eggs. Ann gives him the eggs but Peter drops them. Feeling a little annoyed, Ann gives him another four eggs and Peter takes off. Soon afterwards she hears Lucky barking and Peter and Paul show up together. Paul asks her to try out one of the clubs outside and she begrudgingly approves. In the boat, George and Georgie hear Lucky barking hysterically when suddenly the barking stops. Peter and Paul request more eggs, as the last ones also ended up broken. Ann becomes frustrated, but when George tries to force the men to leave, Peter breaks George’s leg with the golf club. The two young men then take the family hostage.
Paul guides Ann on a hunt to find the family’s dog, which he has killed with George’s golf club. When their neighbors, the Thompsons, visit, Ann passes the two men off as friends. They return to the house, and the Farbers are forced to participate in a number of sadistic games in order to stay alive. Paul asks if George or Ann wants to bet that they will be alive by 9:00 in the morning, and says that he and Peter are betting they will not be. Between playing their games, the two men keep up a constant patter. Paul frequently ridicules Peter’s weight and lack of intelligence. He describes a number of contradicting stories of Peter’s past, although no definitive explanation is ever presented as to the men’s origins or motives.
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.
Funny Games is a 2007 psychological thriller film written and directed by Michael Haneke, and a remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games. Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, and Brady Corbet star in the main roles. The film is a shot-for-shot remake of the 1997 film, albeit in English and set in the United States with different actors. Exterior scenes were filmed on Long Island. The film is an international co-production of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy.
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.
Film Review for Funny Games
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
Funny Games (2008)
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Starring: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Boyd Gaines, Siobhan Fallon, Devon Gearhart, Robert LuPone, Susi Haneke, Linda Moran
Screenplay by: Michael Haneke
Production Design by: Kevin Thompson
Cinematography by: Darius Khondji
Film Editing by: Johanna Ray
Costume Design by: David C. Robinson
Set Decoration by: Rebecca Meis DeMarco
Art Direction by: Hinju Kim
MPAA Rating: R for terror, violence and some langauge.
Distributed by: Warner Independent
Release Date: March 14, 2008
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