Please note: This was screened in Feb 2020
A stomach-churningly real home-invasion thriller, Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation spares no detail in its depiction of the agony suffered by a bourgeois family at the hands of two strangers.
Arriving at their remote lakeside holiday home, middle class couple Anna and Georg (Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe) are alarmed by the unexpected arrival of two young men - Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering). Seducing the family with phony congeniality, on the surface their arrival appears to be that of two friendly neighbours, but soon they begin to subject the family to a twisted and horrifying ordeal as the film’s devious strategy turns savage and appalling... and completely captivating for those who can endure the ensuing terror.
Guaranteed to outrage some with its manipulative schemes, it’s practically impossible to have a neutral opinion about Funny Games - a movie so relentless in its ability to shock that it gained pariah status upon its release in 1997. A landmark exploration of screen violence, Haneke s unforgettable original version (he remade it in 2007 for an American audience) remains an uncompromising, uncomfortable, but never less than compelling experience.