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Funny Games: Difference between revisions
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Austrian filmmaker and social critic Michael Haneke made ''Funny Games'' in 1997, then remade an English-language version ten years later, [[Shot for Shot Remake|shot for shot]]. Although trivially similar to a [[Gorn]] film, it's actually meant as a deconstruction of violent media as well as a giant [[You Bastard]] at the audience who would want to watch it.
Both films center on a yuppie family arriving at their lakeside vacation house. Pulling into their driveway, they see their neighbor has some new guests, two clean-cut young men wearing white gloves who look like they've just walked off the golf course. The men soon arrive on the family's doorstep making a number of requests and imposing on their hospitality. Eventually the family tires of them and ask them to leave, but they ignore the requests. After the husband slaps one of the men, they break his leg with his own golf club and take the family hostage. Though maintaining a nonchalant and even friendly facade, it soon becomes clear that the two men are psychopaths who intend to torment the family with a number of cruel games before murdering them. Can they survive?
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=== This movie contains examples of: ===
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* [[Bound and Gagged]]
* [[Broken Aesop]]: Academics have been arguing since the film came out about whether Paul's [[You Bastard]] point is valid. [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|There's no need for us to do likewise, mind.]]
* [[Can You Hear Me Now?]]: The mother's cell phone is disabled by it getting dropped in the sink, frying the battery, very much [[Truth in Television]].
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: Subverted by {{spoiler|the knife in the sailboat. There's an insert shot of the knife getting left aboard, and in fact the wife lunges for it at the very end, but it's quickly taken away from her and has no effect on the plot or her fate.}}
* [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]]: Paul knows that he's in a film and tracks his deeds based on common plot structure.
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* [[Genre Deconstruction]]: Of the "torture porn" subgenre of horror films. Interestingly, the original film [[Unbuilt Trope|predates]] the most recent revival of the genre that was sparked by the ''[[Saw]]'' and ''[[Hostel]]'' films.
* [[Gory Discretion Shot]]: When {{spoiler|Georgie}} is killed, it happens in the next room, and we only see a blood-spattered television immediately afterward. In fact, the film is surprisingly light on on-screen violence and gore.
* [[Here We Go Again]]: The rampage continues throughout the neighborhood.
* [[Hope Spot]]: The killers suddenly leave, giving the husband and wife some glimmer of hope that they'll survive. {{spoiler|Paul later lampshades that this was necessary for traditional plot structure.}}
* {{spoiler|[[Karma Houdini]]: Paul}} even smirks triumphantly at the audience in the end.
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* [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping]]: [[Tim Roth]] slides between his natural English accent (as in [[Pulp Fiction]]) and his much more nasal, higher-pitched American accent (as in [[Reservoir Dogs]]).
* [[R Emake]]: Almost shot-for-shot and by the same director.
* [[Retcon]]: Within the film! A character rewinds the movie using a remote, inside the movie, and undoes a death.
* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]: {{spoiler|Not only do all the sympathetic characters die, but this is neither the first nor last time that this exact scenario has played out for the killers.}}
* [[Take That, Audience!]]: A number of events in the film are arguably this, including {{spoiler|the rewind scene, in which the audience is given what it wants and then cruelly undone.}} This is [[Word of God|confirmed]] by interviews with the director Haneke.
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