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Funny Games
Warner Independent Pictures


4.2

based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 117 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for terror, violence and some langauge

Starring Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Boyd Gaines, Siobhan Fallon, Devon Gearhart, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Boyd Gaines, Siobhan Fallon, and Devon Gearhart

In this provocative and brutal thriller, a vacationing family gets an unexpected visit from two deeply disturbed young men. Their idyllic holiday turns nightmarish as they are subjected to unimaginable terrors and struggle to stay alive. (Warner Independent Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Horror \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Michael Haneke
DIRECTED BY:	Michael Haneke
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 10, 2008 Theatrical: March 14, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / USA / France

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

A chilly and extraordinarily controlled treatise on film violence, Funny Games punishes the audience for its casual bloodlust by giving it all the sickening torture and mayhem it could possibly desire. Neat trick, that.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

You can take a page from Wes Craven before he went flat and keep repeating, "It's only a movie; it's only a movie; it's only a movie." But is it?

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The experience of watching Funny Games, be it the original or this version, is never forgotten, whatever your ultimate impression of the film.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Funny Games is not entertainment but it is an experience.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Can a movie be gripping and repellent at the same time? In Funny Games, a mockingly sadistic and terrifying watch-the-middle-class-writhe-like-stuck-pigs thriller, the director Michael Haneke puts his characters in a vise, and the audience too.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

By and large, reviewers have conceded that the picture is exceptionally gripping and suspenseful while deriding its moral subtext as a crock. The only explanation possible for such fuming pettiness, in my opinion, is the fact that Michael Haneke isn’t one of us.

Empire Damon Wise

A stylish, darkly satirical horror-thriller, raising serious questions about Hollywood’s sanitisation of violence.

Portland Oregonian Stan Hall

One might reasonably despise Funny Games and consider Haneke an exploitative hypocrite. Still, whether it's the original or the replica, this is a film that is impossible to enjoy and difficult to forget.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Is Funny Games an unqualified success? No, and for this reason: In order to analyze the devolution of violence into entertainment, the premise obliges the film to superimpose a complicated game atop the genre's simple one – in other words, it makes a game out of the game it condemns.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Watts, who is one of the film's executive producers, brings a taut intelligence to the proceedings, but her character, like Roth's, is more archetype than actual person.

Dallas Observer Jim Ridley

Haneke rigs the movie into a weapon against its audience. Like the infected porn that destroys perverts in Cronenberg's "Videodrome," Funny Games means to kill our pleasure in the very thing we theoretically paid to see: zipless, guilt-free, morally untroubled mayhem.

Washington Post John Anderson

While the movie's star -- and ruler, and ship's captain, and grand poobah -- is Haneke himself, his actors are sublime.

The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the picture, its few intellectual pretensions notwithstanding, is as a classy horror film with a particularly nasty edge. It's not exactly entertainment, but it casts a poisonous spell.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

If this is daring in theory, it's a failure in practice. Exactingly well-made, the movie is grueling and unpleasant in the extreme - that's the point - but it's also working from a specious premise, that film-school Brechtian devices can bring on mass enlightenment.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The film is merciless in its depiction of death and suffering, Pitt and Corbet are perfectly cast, and Watts, who also served as executive producer, gives a disturbingly raw performance.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Funny Games is fundamentally a bourgeois exercise in authorial sadism. As the methodical games grind on, the suffocatingly beige and white surroundings start to look like a mausoleum.

Slate Dana Stevens

Many American viewers may take Haneke at his word and walk out midway through this grueling ethics exam of a movie. But much as I may resent the facile polemics of Haneke's shame-the-viewer project, I have to respect the way that he nailed me, trembling, to my seat.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It’s one thing to make a movie filled with mayhem and then implicate the audience for watching it; it’s another thing entirely to come back ten years later with the same movie, hype it with a marketing campaign, and try to implicate the viewer again. One nice thing about America is that you can’t be tried twice for the same crime.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Haneke's new Funny Games has a current of bleak humor that comes through more clearly when you're not reading subtitles. It remains a horrifying, implacable mind-fuck, liable to be widely misunderstood and widely despised.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The picture, remade by the maestro Haneke himself, is every bit as gripping, suspenseful and upsetting as the original. And it's even more of a crock.

USA Today Claudia Puig

So sadistic and disturbing, Games is easily the toughest movie to sit through since 1994's "Natural Born Killers."

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

A patronizing, self-satisfied piece of work, Funny Games is Michael Haneke's way of chastising us for blindly following the traditional rules of entertainment.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The new movie wears an air of old hat. I 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.

Variety Derek Elley

As shocking and deliberately manipulative as the original movie and -- some may reckon -- even more pointless.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Funny Games is an art house "Hostel" -- it mistakes self-consciousness for intelligence.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The joke is on arthouse audiences who show up for Funny Games, which is basically torture porn every bit as manipulative and reprehensible as "Hostel," even if it's tricked out with intellectual pretension.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Just because it's a conscious commentary on other vile, useless, pointless cinematic exercises doesn't make it any less vile, useless and pointless.

Newsweek David Ansen

That this relentless barrage of psychological and physical torture is extremely well made and powerfully performed--Watts hurls herself into her physically demanding role with heroic conviction--somehow makes it worse.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there's no reason why you should.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

One thing you can say about Michael Haneke's unbelievably brutal thriller, Funny Games, is that it's an experience: an unpleasant, unsettling, cruelly manipulative and finally hateful experience, but an experience nonetheless. You'll likely lose some sleep over this one.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The film calls attention to its own artificial status. It actually knows it’s a movie! What a clever, tricky game! What fun! What a fraud.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

In addition to being borderline unendurable, Funny Games is inexplicable, and I don't mean in any philosophical sense.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Haneke’s assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged--a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.2 (out of 10) based on 117 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Enzo M gave it an8:
Apparently, not everyone got it. A worthy remake of the 1998 version.

Muzza Me gave it a1:
Buggest load of crap I have seen in years, want my money back.

Aelieas gave it an8:
This movie is a success. Not a success in an everyone will love it kind of way, but a sucess in that the writer and director created a movie which conveys what they wanted to convey. This movie was not meant to entertain, so much as instill a large range of emotions and happiness or entertainment got missed. Right from the start the movie gives you an unnerving suspensful feeling that something is going to go wrong here. This isn't achieved through blatant hinting that common movies generally resort to but by a subtle undertone of eeriness in the storytelling and direction. Unsurprisingly, like all horror movies, things do start to go wrong but it is done in such a way that you don't feel like you have seen this all before. This movie presents you with common horror movie stereotypes and shatters them right in front of you. An example of this is the lack of music, which means that an terror or suspense you feel is completely due to what you are seeing. It is artistic and brilliant at what it does, which is make you wonder why you are watching it and finally make you hate it. This is why some people will give this movie a 0 without a second thought and it is because this movie requires a second thought. If you want a movie that tries to break the mold and suceeds with terrifying fervour, if you can see the artform behind movies, the underlying message, if you want a movie that will be unforgettable for better or for worse, then you should experience this movie. I can't say you'll like it, but hopefully you will appreciate it.

Marlon E gave it a0:
The Worst Movie Ever the ONION magazine MUST have gotten paid or something!! seriously if you ever hear about this movie run run away! it was so bad it motivated me to become a member on this website and just let someone know just how AMAZING bad it was. Biggest waste of 2 hours of my life!!

[Anonymous] gave it a1:
To rewind the movie by the actor himself, not cool. Not to mention how slow are the rolls. Perhaps that was the whole idea, to make a movie with non sense.

S O'Connor gave it a0:
The worst movie that has and will ever be made. things in this movie happen 10X slower than it would take in real life. i would have rather slowly cut my self than watch this film. the only reason i kept watching is for the hope that something would happen worth wile in this film. of course nothing happened in the film. however there was a fair warning in the begening of the film. the starting credits look like a small child, maybe around 4-5 years of age created them. at that time i should have realized to walk away. my bad.

Robert M. gave it a0:
For several years I thought that the 1996 Mark Wahlberg movie "Fear" was the absolute worst movie ever made. I was wrong. Funny Games is by far the absolute worst film of all time. I kept looking around the theatre wondering why I wasted my time and money on this film. I stayed mainly because I was certain that somehow, someway, this film could redeem itself and yet it never did. A very disappointing outing indeed. I wanted more than my money back, I wanted my TIME back. It is pretty evident that when a movie is released and then the DVD is released 3 months later, it probably should have gone straight to DVD. Don't waste your time, money or brain cells on this one. You will just be disappointed and have a sick hope in your heart that Naomi Watts can somehow make up for it someday.

Funny Games Warner Independent Pictures

Funny Games
Warner Independent Pictures