For many horror movies, creativity does not exist outside of a clever plot or wild deaths. However, for Michael Haneke's updated Funny Games, the viewer is forced to enjoy a film that scares both intelligent viewers (who normally do not like horror flicks) and frightens horror fans (who normally do not enjoy smart films). Its overall design is to develop a new way of torturing viewers (by substance, not visual gore). But because of this subtle message against modern film, Funny Games has hit a critical wall, leaving it in the limbo between masterpiece and failure.
The Set Up of Funny Games
The film starts like any other film about upper echelon society (Dan in Real Life, Margot at the Wedding). However, for Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, the pace of the film is quickly changed from glee to terror (as illustrated by the intro music transition). We are quickly introduced to the family, the neighbors, and the crazed youths, Peter and Paul (who are passed off as upstanding young gents).
The tension mounts when Peter and Paul come to borrow a couple of eggs, but decide to spend the night torturing the family instead. After a bet and a series of tedious games, Roth and Watts fight to stay alive and escape their would-be killers.
Funny Games Breaks Cinematic Rules
For Funny Games to achieve the literary success that it desires, it has to break many cinematic rules. For many viewers, this is insulating. However, if you look at the quality of the presentation and the delivery of Haneke's past works (similar rewind scenes in Cache' and style in El Pianaste), you can see the importance of the cinematic mixing of literary elements, essentially making Funny Games less of a movie, and more of an exercise in movie making.
So, the relevance of this (the deus ex machina or, god in the machine) is to allow Haneke to put together a story that has no hope. Peter and Paul have all the pieces, all the control, and dictate all the action. They have the ability to change actions of the film at any time and, simply put, it does not have to make sense.
This same principle applies (but doesn't make sense until the remote control) with elements such as the name calling (Tom and Jerry, Peter and Paul, Beavis and Butt-Head), eating raw meat, and the mixed background stories. But, through clever writing, Haneke couples this concept with the teachihngs of Howell, to develop a back story that highlights the pitfalls of reality and modern cinema (all of what you see is reality, hence be careful what you watch).
Horror Faux Pas
Many horror movies follow a strict diet of predictability, gore, and corny dialouge. However, Haneke throws caution to the wind and makes a couple of horror faux pas (completely intentional, and be sure to notice that this film was originally produced in 1997).
For starters, make sure to note the dialogue between Peter and Paul. They never come up with a proper backstory, and spend most of their dialogue on traps to throw off their victims and the viewer (in particular, 'Paul is a doctor, he can help' and 'be careful near the water, remember you can't swim Tubby?') These lines force the viewer to think a scene is being set up, but the scene just never happens. The allusion dialogue is for nothing and the predictable foreshadowing of horror movies does not apply here.
Coupling the lack of usable foreshadowing with the order of deaths (child first) and the lack of the father as a usable character, allows Funny Games to break the mold of a normal horror movie.
