Funny Games is classified as a horror story. It's not a classic horror story, more along the lines of Hitchcock, instead of Romero.
Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and their son Deven Gearhart are vacationing at the lake. Just like the rest of us, they're gonna put the skiff in the water, and have a week of sailing and fun. George, Ann, and Georgie are the typical happy family.
It seems like they try to plan it so that they're there with their neighbors, and have golf outings, and grill out, and boat, and basically have a great upper class vacation every year.
Until Ann answers the door, and Paul is there. He claims he's the nephew of the neighbor, and that they need to borrow eggs. It all goes downhill from there. Peter shows up, Paul's partner, and all hell breaks loose.
What ensues next is 12 hours of torture for the family. I won't spoil it, but there are some very odd, sneakily creepy parts, that I'm still thinking about. Let me say this though, the creepiest part...it could happen.
Naomi Watts was great. She had the part of a distraught mom/wife down great. And it was real, you felt her suffering, and her fear. Not to mention, she's just gorgeous.
Brady Corbbet (Peter), and Michael Pitt (Paul), play the creepy intruders to a T. They play ultra polite psychopaths. But the best part is the banter between them when with the family. Like they were sharing little jokes. And the obvious lies to the familiy, and the adolescent giggles. The teasing, the banter...you got the feeling that there was a real bond.
I thought the script was ok. Not very strong. It did have a few twists, and plot happenings that you didn't expect. I will say, there is a part in it with a remote, that I thought was incredibly stupid. It made no sense, and in my taste, ruined the movie. If they'd have skipped 5 minutes of the movie, it would have been a much better movie in my eyes.
The casting was great. They got really good actors and actresses, but didn't ruin it by getting huge names. You know who most of them are, but not so much that they are all you look for.
The bad parts were the kids acting. I am not a huge fan of child actors, and this is no exception. He's ok, but not great.
My biggest disappointment, other than the remote, was the relative non use of the great Tim Roth. When he's in the movie, he's good. He's looking a little bit older, but it looks good on him. But he spends a whole lot of time in the movie in his own little world, almost as an afterthought.
The whole remote thing was horrible. It really threw me. I will talk no more of it.
I don't want to give anything away, so this is a shorty. I'm gonna give it a 7 out of 10. It is enjoyable. There are some cool twists, and some pretty good acting. You could rent worse things.
