ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Jons Klaessens Anyone who has ever seen a Michael Haneke film will know he can provide a near to perfect, yet challenging piece of cinema and Funny Games is perhaps just a close to perfection like any of the other films which he made that I have seen. You will not hear me complain about the fantastic acting, cinematography, pacing, editing et cetera et cetera. The reason why Funny Games does not receive a ten star rating like Caché, Das Weisse Band or Amour did, is because of Haneke's intention for making it. He made this film where two sadistic young men capture and torture an upper-middle class family because he wanted to make the audience aware of the fact that we enjoy this types of cruel movies. This cruel film is an essay, stating that audiences revel in the torture of innocent fictional characters. And from what I could glean from the actual essay he wrote on the film, there is also some commentary in there about the role of violent media in a violent society, but I will not follow him down that rabbit hole just yet. Let's for now stick with his primary message. I will never deny that audiences don't enjoy violent or even cruel movies. I myself am an enormous fan of all kinds of horror, be it slocky gore fests or serious suspense filled dramatic thrillers. Funny Games is not a horror movie. It is an art film, wearing the mask of a horror film, which it pulls of halfway through, so it can accuse us of enjoying the sick imagery on screen. Through the various fourth-wall breaks the killers interact with us, asking for our opinion and approval, as to say that we are the ones causing all this. We are not Mr. Haneke. Nobody forced you to make a horror film. Just like nobody is going to force me to like your pretentious accusations. And note that when I use the word pretentious I am not referring to the filmmaking, but to the intention of the filmmaker. Funny Games is an expertly crafted insult to the audience for liking a genre of movies the director does not. The film could have been great, but its downfall lays in the fact that it thinks it is better than its colleagues. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to watch a dumb, gory horror flick, and enjoy myself.

sunheadbowed 'It turns out one universe is real, the other fiction.' 'How come?' 'I don't know.''Funny Games' is an unflinching and fearless study on morality that manages to be both terrifying and funny, it's certainly a film that would be misunderstood by many.The film is a deliberately jarring juxtaposition of both exploitative unrealism and the depressingly realistic within the spectrum of cinema violence. The antagonists are known to us by comical nicknames, such as 'Fatty' or 'Beavis and Butthead' and 'Tom and Jerry' (the latter a deliberate reference to 'acceptable' screen violence for children we take for granted), they constantly make jokes and speak directly to the camera that they perform for, having learned how to behave in this situation from watching violent films, yet we are never allowed to relate to them or their sense of humour, or feel any sympathy for what they are doing, they are completely unjustified at all times; the victims of 'Funny Games' on the other hand are presented horrifically real -- it's likely this is how people would react in the real world when thrown into this nightmare situation, and they are unaware that they are starring in a movie (the late Susanne Lothar's performance in particular is unforgettable). This seesaw of the silly cartoon and the gut-wrenchingly real is uncomfortable to the extreme.This is a film about film violence, it is not a 'violent film'. All acts of violence happen off-screen, we are never permitted to partake in any explicit titillation or enjoyment of witnessing violent acts. The one important exception to this rule is when Anna grabs a shotgun from her captors and blows Fatty's guts out against the wall. We are punished immediately for how much we enjoy this act of revenge by the other antagonist, played by Arno Frisch, grabbing the remote, rewinding the film and resetting us right back to where we were before the act happened. It's an absurdly clever and intellectual moment but it's one that will disgust anyone coming to this film from the wrong angle.Likewise, at one point Anna is forced to strip naked by her captors, which happens off-screen, only a close-up of her face with its etched shock and despair is shown to us and we are not allowed to partake in this act of sexual violence; yet later, when alone with her husband she voluntarily takes off her top displaying her breasts to the viewer. The message is clear: nudity is not immoral, but violence and rape is, even if you're merely a voyeur.There is some powerful symbolic imagery in 'Funny Games', too, such as when Fatty accidentally drops and smashes three eggs -- one for each kidnapped family member, and the sight of the knife on the boat, which is psychologically introduced to us at the beginning of the film as a symbol of hope, only to be flippantly tossed into the water at the close.Ultimately, it's difficult to understand what exact message the film is giving to us: is cinema's exploitation of violence a force for evil in the world? Depictions of violence per se are not dangerous, but how violence is presented, how we view that violence and what we feel about bloody revenge are most certainly dangerous grey areas that we must always talk about. Thankfully there are some filmmakers such as Michael Haneke who are brave and moral enough to confront us with the questions we need to be asked.

durkopeter1996 I think that says it all. Not enough that the movie makes ABSOLUTELY no sense, it also gets you frustrated and angry. Without ANY REASON.I didn't just lose 2 hours of my life that i'm never getting back, I also lose a lot of my brain cells in the process. I have to spit thinking about this movie...

Sarah C. This review is obviously not going to end well.*looks smugly into the camera* See, the whole point is that the "victims" here is not the nice upper middle class family who can't for some asinine reason recall the emergency numbers (how convenient for our young sadistic smooth-talking Germanic gentlemen) but the audience. How funny and original is that? Are you entertained yet? Aren't you? Why aren't you? *shoots you in the knee* Wow, I have been like super civil with you up to this point yet you choose to bleed on our brand new IKEA rug? What kind of a rude guest are you? Tsk tsk.This and many more is the movie's principal tone. Still the most offensive thing about it is not the self-reflexive yet pointless violence that we the stupid brainless masses obviously crave according to our bitter Germanic director I can almost hear (profanity related to giving yourself pleasure) over audience's assumed stupidity but never-ending boredom intertwined with cringe-inducing moments. There is no story here except sending a big "F you" to the horror/thriller fan. This movie would have worked better as a short student film but as our lovely corpulent Australopithecus friend in golf attire already pointed out it wouldn't be a legitimate full-length "thriller" movie with all of its classic tropes playfully subverted making the "prank" on the audience incomplete and we don't want that, right? (Yawn.)If you are into meta self-aware treatment of tired old themes or works containing a thinly-veiled anti-violence message, "Deadpool (2016)," "The Cabin in the Woods" (2012), Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" all do what Funny Games aspires to be a hundred times better.*kills you so you don't have to be subjected to Funny Games anymore*