One Paragraph Movie Review: Funny Games

One hundred and sixty-sixth film: Funny Games, an Austrian home-invasion thriller that would be a lot more clever if it wasn’t so absolutely sure that it was very clever. This is a violent film that barely shows any actual violence, and instead drags you uncomfortably along a kidnapped family’s drawn-out night of dread by the eyes, frowning the entire time. The kidnappers, like the director Michael Haneke, are unbearably smug and easily dislikeable, and I kept checking to see how much more of the film was left so that I knew how much longer I would spend feeling extremely bad for. The cleverness of the film is in how it makes you think about violent films, as a voyeur and a viewer vaccinated against tropes. But the dumbness of the film is how up its own arse it is, the head kidnapper breaking the fourth wall more than once and infuriatingly rewinding what would have been a major plot shift with an actual remote control. I rolled my eyes loudly, with an Austrian accent. Worth seeing if you like tense experimental films and hate enjoying yourself, not worth seeing if you want all dogs to survive all movies ever. Hmmmm. Two and a half ominous rolling golf balls out of five.