Funny Games

Despite its Title, ‘The Strangers’ Actually a Familiar Repeat of Horror Film Conventions

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:08:28 -0700

CHICAGO – Poor Liv Tyler. She’s stuck in a remote vacation home with nothing but the blank-stare acting of Scott Speedman to “save” her. What’s a rock daughter who becomes an actress to do? First, she shouldn’t sign onto yet another version of the couple-in-terror cliché.

Bryan Bertino in “The Strangers”.
Photo credit: Rogue Pictures

“The Strangers” is a scary movie that has been there and done that with a few style points thrown in to distract from the ripoff.

Tyler is Kristen McKay: a single gal who’s on the precipice of the big engagement. Speedman is James Hoyt. He’s her potential fiancé: a boorish chap who thinks the big rock is a slam dunk.

After they both attend a wedding, Hoyt sets up his uncle’s remote cabin (cue ominous music) to celebrate what he figured would be his betrothal.

Surprisingly, though, Kristen has rejected his promise. For some reason, they’re still completing their depressing journey to the cabin. The heavy and forced atmosphere is interrupted by a mysterious female stranger who asks if someone else lives in the cabin. After they run her off, the house explodes with sounds of a break in. Scary figures are out to get them.

Liv Tyler in “The Strangers”.
Photo credit: Rogue Pictures

Oddly enough, I just screened a film that makes fun of this very premise called “Baghead,” which is pending review. If “The Strangers” filmmakers would also have seen this other film, they would have shut down production and retooled the costumes because the main marauder actually wears a similar get-up.

There’s nothing surprising or creative in this film even up to the final solution for the silly couple.

“The Strangers” first wastes the tantalizing setup of the broken engagement only to torture the pair with one preposterous catastrophe after another. In modern horror films, there’s the problem of the mobile phone.

How do the filmmakers get rid of something everyone has? In this case (as well as in the film “Funny Games”), James leaves it in the car where it disappears. Whew. There are a few notable exceptions to the dreck. Liv Tyler is a good actress, and even though her screaming gets tiresome swiftly, she still manages to turn in a credible performance.

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As well, the use of a record player and a skipping needle (so randomly anachronistic) is an effective mood applicator in certain scenes.

The good thing about the three masked intruders is that they stay masked. This saves their careers. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Scott Speedman. He reacts to every scary indignation as if he was being checked for fleas. It was one of the first times I was hoping for a quick kill of a main character.

The most infuriating scene is part of the finale. It involves religion (naturally) and the type of scare that’s the equivalent of your 10-year-old sister popping out of a bush during Halloween. Unlike your sister, you can’t get back at this film by pulling its hair. Now that’s truly unfortunate.

“The Strangers” opened on May 30, 2008.

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

With Surreal Madness, Strange Boys Play ‘Funny Games’

HollywoodChicago.com — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:36:03 -0700

CHICAGO – Imagine a film with no redeeming or uplifting emotional qualities with evil that tortures the soul, squirm-inducing narrative elements and a relentless anxiety that practically has us – like the characters in the film – screaming for mercy. Imagine also that this film is excellent.

Naomi Watts in “Funny Games”.
Photo credit: IMDb

“Funny Games” is a shot-by-shot remake of writer and director Michael Haneke’s 1997 Austrian film of the same name, which now features American actors and their presumed sensibilities.

Naomi Watts from “The Ring” is Ann: the 30-something matriarch of an upper-middle class American family who’s heading for their vacation home.

Her husband, George (Tim Roth), and son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart), are accompanying her. As the family approaches the heavily gated development, a murky apprehension is in the air as familiar friends offer tentative greetings.

The source for all this unease is a pair of boys – the eerie Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet – in their early 20s who are dressed in casual white clothing down to their gloved hands. While they approach the home of Ann and George with the presupposed notion to borrow some eggs, the reason for their infiltration is much more maniacal.

Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt (middle) and Brady Corbet
in “Funny Games”.
Photo credit: IMDb

They capture the family and begin torturing them. They force them to play a series of barbarous games that take them to the limits of sadistic persecution.

The “funny” awareness of this story is that it’s always edge-of-the-seat compelling despite the bad taste of the power trip by the boys over the family.

Using a deliberate and almost winking-at-the-camera approach, director Haneke creates a meditation on the ruthlessness that is symbolically lyrical.

George as portrayed by Roth is rendered as ineffectual from the outset of the boy’s penetration.

There is a sense of his giving up when his vulnerability is exposed, which leaves Watt’s Ann character as the only saving grace for the family. Is it the youth of the perpetrators that’s doing him in or his immediate capitulation to impotence after being humiliated in front of his family?

Michael Pitt in “Funny Games”.
Photo credit: IMDb

The boys themselves – who refer to each other in pop-culture pairings such as Peter and Paul, Tom and Jerry or Beavis and Butthead – relish their roles as avenging angels of eternal rest.

Despite shortcomings that are obvious, their ability to control the events through violence and sadism designs a larger measure to their presence and power.

They are portrayed as white god-like creatures with an ability to effortlessly manipulate events within the film while also existing also outside them. One particular action even proves their invincibility, which ratchets the creep factor right up into our faces.

This is cinematic gamesmanship that is simultaneously brutal, bizarre and elegant in its audacity. Like his previous film “Caché” in 2005, Haneke has artistically exploited cinematic structure to play with and engage the mind. It’s a very funny game indeed.

“Funny Games” opened on March 14, 2008.

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By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com