
Vulture
Haneke's assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged -- a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.
Full reviewNaomi Watts and Tim Roth star as a picture perfect couple on a lakeside vacation with their son. Their idyllic life is shattered when a pair of polite yet psychopathic house guests announce themselves. Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher) literally returns to his old stomping ground in this shot-for-shot remake of his incendiary 1997 classic Funny Games. The home-invasion plot and its attendant brutalisation are used to turn the tables on the viewer, taunting our appetite for on-screen sadism as vicarious entertainment.
Haneke's assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged -- a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.
Full reviewAs the film progresses, it becomes painfully clear there's no real point to the story; what we're witnessing is a cool, intellectual exercise, as devoid of character and motivation as the two psychos themselves.
Full reviewIt's not a reassuring vision but that's not the name of Haneke's particular game.
Full reviewI would absolutely defend Haneke's right to relaunch his broadside on our voyeuristic vices, but he's not keeping up with the times; he's behind them.
Full reviewFunny Games, Michael Haneke's first English-language film - and a compulsively faithful replica of his notorious 1997 German-language feature of the same title - subjects its viewers to a long spectacle of wanton and gratuitous brutality.
Full reviewFunny Games is available to stream in Australia now on Google Play and Apple TV.
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