Funny games (35mm)

“Why are you doing this to us?” “Why not?”

While Georg, Anna, and their son Georgie are planning on having a normal holiday, Paul and Peter are planning on having their own kind of fun. Clad in matching white shirts and white gloves, Peter and Paul take the family hostage in their own home. In this claustrophobic terror, emerges a series of sadistic games. The question is: why?

Funny Games switches up the game by placing the spotlight on you -usually left in the snug dark amidst a crowded audience. Are Paul and Peter merely doing our voyeuristic bidding? Or is their motive as simple as Paul’s own answer – “why not?” Be it a nihilistic experiment that follows logic out of a nightmare or simple sadism, Funny Games is bound to unsettle you no matter how comfortably you’re sitting. It makes it easy to understand how it held its grip on writer and director Haneke, who went on to remake an identical version of this original, ten years later.