DVD of the Week: Funny Games

(DVD of the Week is a new column by Kayla. Since I watch so many movies, and usually once a week [but hardly ever new releases], I thought it would make a good column and/or help other people discover new movies.)

Funny Games (2007)
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Starring: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet

I will always trust the critics' quotes movie producers put on the front of DVD boxes from now on. Because the ones for this movie was spot on: this movie does not "play nice, easy, or fair."

If I had to give you a basic summary of the plot, it would be this: a well-to-do bourgeois family of three heads to their summer home for the summer. Instead of a nice vacation, however, what they get is two sociopaths playing "games" with them over the duration of one horrific night. However, this being an art-house film, there's so much more than that. This movie is horrifying, but it is important to note that it is not gory. Much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a lot of the horrific things in this movie happen off-screen. However, unlike Massacre, this movie has more of a point then "what they don't show is usually the scariest." The whole point of this film is to parody the audience. People, especially Americans, revel in violence on television and in movies. I'm especially guilty of this, being an avid fan of Tarantino and his religion of artful gore. What Funny Games aims to do is, by promising everything (or, in this case, a torture porn film worthy of A Clockwork Orange or Hostel), yet gives us, the anxious audience waiting for gore, nothing.

It's easy to pass this film off as the country club version of The Strangers. There is even a similar line: "Why are you doing this to us?" And while The Strangers fufills the audiences' thoughts that these invaders are indeed crazy buy having them answer, "Because you were home," Funny Games plays an even darker game with, "Why not?"