Funny Games - Analysis

Paul and Peter are two young drug-addicts with sadistic and violent tendencies who rob and torture rather wealthy families in their holiday residences.

Mr. Pitt (Paul), blue-eyed and baby-faced, appears to be the calm, ironical alpha predator, while Mr. Corbet (Peter), acting skittish and high-strung, looks like the weaker, crazier one. But that might just be part of the game they and Mr. Haneke are playing, since the whole point of Peter and Paul is that they function without identifiable motive or affect.
- Movie review - 'Funny Games' - Funny Games (2007), The New York Times, Site


The two young men's approach on the main robbery in the movie, is that they pretend to live with a family nearby. Some time later Peter knocks on the door asking for some eggs. He keeps talking his way out of leaving and at some point Paul shows up. When the father of the family, George slaps Paul, Peter knocks him down with a golf club, breaking his legs. The two then capture the whole family and starts playing sadistic games with them.

The film begins with a loving family - George Farber, his wife Ann, his son Georgie and their dog, arriving at their lake house. Their next-door neighbor, Fred is seen with two young men, Peter and Paul, who seem to be their friends or relatives. The two young men come over to borrow eggs. Ann is in the kitchen cooking while George and Georgie are outside by the lake, tending to their boat. They seem friendly, and they use Georges golf club. When the men depart with the eggs they soon return with them broken. After asking for more eggs which also end up broken, Ann becomes frustrated, but when George tries to force the men to leave, Peter breaks George's leg with the golf club and they take the family hostage

- Funny Games (2007), IMDb, Site

Overall throughout the movie Paul keeps talking about the entertainment value of the movie. He breaks the so called "fourth wall" of the movie multiple times by looking at the camera and talking to the audience. This raises focus on the fact that scary movie and horror movies entertain us by showing the pain and suffering of fictional characters.

"Michael Haneke’s Funny Games is a film that is seemingly at war with itself and its genre. Though ostensibly falling into the category of ‘thriller’, Funny Games both fulfills and resists the expectations raised by such a label, shattering not only convention, but the sense of security we feel in knowing that it is all ‘just a movie’."
- Film Epidemic, Joel, Joel's blog