Basically Funny Games is about an affluent family (Naomi Watts & Tim Roth, and son) who visit their vacation house for a typical weekend away. Upon arriving to their gated community of other affluent families Ann (Naomi Watts) rolls down her window to shout out to a neighbor inquiring about their game of golf for the next day, the neighbor is accompanied by two young men dressed in all white golf clothes and acts very strange. A few scenes later after the family has arrived at their own home one of the young men has come to Ann’s door to ask to borrow a few eggs for the other neighbor. The young man acts clumsily and drops the eggs and ‘accidently’ drops Ann’s cell phone into a sink full of water. The young man now introduced as Peter (aka Tom, aka Beavis), acts very polite and apologizes for his clumsiness and proceeds to ask for additional eggs, Ann becoming very short obliges and whisks Peter away. All the while George (Tim Roth) and son Georgie are outdoors working on their boat, and their dog is barking non-stop. A few moments later the other young man from next door, Paul (aka Jerry, aka Butthead), appears at the door looking for Peter. Unknowingly Ann lets Paul inside to wait for Peter primarily because Paul acts so politely and appears to be a nice young man.

Without going into too much more detail a few scenes later Peter and Paul have completely turned the tables and have basically taken the family hostage in their own home by taking a golf club to George’s leg, crippling the patriarch and in the world of the film rendering the mother and son helpless (a point of contention for some viewers). After holding the family hostage Peter & Paul announce that they are going to play a little game, and basically bet that the family will not be alive 12 hours from now, and the family must bet that they will. So at it’s heart this film is sort of a home-invasion movie, but the trick to it all is that the victims are only as helpless as they want to be. After this premise is revealed the plot sort of runs it’s course and other terrible things happen to the family. But what makes this film so brilliant in this aspect is that the violence doesn’t have a specific purpose, it’s never revealed to the audience why Peter & Paul want to inflict pain onto the family other than ‘just because’. This breaks the general purpose of a horror/suspense film genre in that we can’t blame or identify with the antagonist’s for the bad they are doing. Without being able to say ‘oh those guys are pure psychopaths who are only pure evil’ we as audience members can’t feel sympathy for the victims and root for the good guys to win.

Such unusual things as one of the antagonist’s walking off screen to make a sandwich while the other one shoots a family member is another very weird perspective often not seen in this genre. By Haneke providing these scenes between the scenes views of what might be happening off screen the film feels all the more ‘real’, which is another aspect that I feel is necessary to convey the message he is trying to provide. Will you like this movie? Probably not. Most people don’t because they go into the film thinking it’s just going to be another horror/home-invasion movie and that the good guys will win, but they don’t. The film ends without the satisfaction of any of the modern structures of films we’ve come to know. The bad guys get away with murdering the family and continue on to a next unsuspecting family. What’s the point of this? Well like No Country for Old Men, the film is a thesis on our modern society and the idea that not every ends with happiness, that there is violence in the world and there’s a lot that people get away with. I think most people who go into this film with the understanding that this film is trying to say that ‘hey, why are you so interested in seeing glorified violence in film, it isn’t a good thing, and you shouldn’t be excited to see it, even from the safety of your couch’. One other small note about the film is that even though it seems like this film is violent or intends to be violent, all violence is shown off-screen.