Funny, but not LOL funny

From the opening credits it is clear that “Funny Games” is anything but a playful comedy. The screaming heavy-metal music played over the image of a happy family on a car trip vividly foreshadows the chaos that is to come.

Michael Haneke (“Caché,” “The Piano Teacher”), who wrote and directed the 1997 original “Funny Games,” also wrote and directed the new version, which, like the Gus Van Sant “Psycho” remake is a shot-for-shot replication of its predecessor. In this version, Haneke had the luxury of working with some of the best actors in the business.

George (Roth), Anne (Watts) and their son Georgie (Devon Gearhart) are vacationing at their gated upscale lake house when Anne is approached by a strange visitor named Peter (Brady Corbet). He seems harmless enough, so she lets him inside to borrow some eggs. After some (deliberate?) klutziness, Peter’s partner Paul (Pitt) enters, and violent mayhem ensues. The two intruders take over the house and force the family to take part in their sadistic games, betting the family that each of them will not live to see the morning.

“Funny Games” is not your typical horror flick. Haneke ignores Hollywood-style filmmaking, using lengthy scenes with single shots, questioning the “good guy must win” plot point and sacrificing visual violence for audio of the carnage. To add to the creepy and disturbing atmosphere of the film, Paul and Peter have a hyperaware yet hypocritical sense of politeness, in which any perceived insult must be paid for in anguish. Even the animals are not spared: note one of the great dead-body-discovery scenes.

This uncompromising film refuses to bow down to conventional filmmaking. Interestingly, “Funny Games” is self-reflective in this respect. Paul looks at the audience at key moments in the film, and Haneke often toys with generic suspense story lines and gratuitous Hollywood violence.

The film has received mixed reviews, and with cinema of this violently thematic magnitude it is to be expected. But if nothing else, Michael Haneke has created a very realistically disturbing film and brought forth amazing performances from a group of brilliant actors. With its unrelenting violence, lengthy scenes and array of still long-shots, “Funny Games” feels like a film Tarantino would want to make.