After reading the comments in the fray I cannot help but think most of the posters have the wrong impression of the movie. But before I begin, I would like to state that I have watched the original and not the version that is the subject of this review. However, based on the review, I would assume the themes are similar, if not identical.

Many posts have compared Funny Games to "torture porn" films such as Hostel and Saw. The movie is indeed designed to shock the audience, but not in the same way as those other movies. Whereas Hostel and Saw use the violence itself as the source of the shock, the most horrific moments in Funny Games are in the buildup to, and aftermath of, such violence. In fact, on-screen depictions of violence are virtually non-existent, and you could probably count the acts of violence (on and off screen) on one hand (I counted 5).

Funny Games uses the medium of shock violence films to comment on and condemn films like Hostel and Saw (and us the viewer for watching them). It does not sensationalize violence, and if anything tries to depict its aftermath as accurately as possible. However, this has been done before, and as such is not the most remarkable aspect of the film.

Instead, it's Haneke's challenge to the opt-repeated rational that "it's only a movie". He contends that the violence depicted in films is in fact "real" and has very real consequences on us the viewer. It is supposed to make us ask why we willingly subject ourselves to such violence. Do we actually enjoy it? Are we simply unaware of its real world consequences?

Whether Funny Games is successful in its goals, or is even necessary in the first place, is arguable. At times it seems like Haneke is the older brother who grabs your writs and hits you with your own hands, and then asks "why are you hitting yourself?". Some fray posters, particularly picabia and TiQuinn, have raised valid criticisms and concerns. There are many reasons not to watch this movie, but the fact that it is just another Hostel or Saw is not one of them.

But the makers of "Saw" and "Hostel" use exactly the same arguments in favor of their films.

I posted on 40 years of violent films elsewhere on this board, and I'm a big fan of a lot of them (as my nickname attests; I created it for "The Sopranos" boards), but...

(a) You reach a point where filmmakers go too far (torturing women, children, animals) and

(b) such atrocities rather spoil the legacy of our "great violent films" (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, Pulp Fiction) Note that in the majority of those films, bloody conflict is among gangsters or gunslingers or warriors. Where innocents are murdered (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate), matters are stylish and fairly quick. (The "Psycho" murders were violent, but pitched at "BOO!" level in tone.)

(c) The "art film" excuse ("You are to contemplate why you love violence in movies") holds no more water than the "Saw"/"Hostel" defense.

The "Slate" review tells me that the child actor who plays the boy "hopefully got counseling." I understand that Naomi Watts strips and Tim Roth is badly beaten and I've gotten a look at the punks playing the tormentors (didn't one of them play the same part in a Sandra Bullock movie?), and I hear that the torture and torments go on and on and on... and I know all I need to know about this movie. It's case has already been made in "A Clockwork Orange" and "Henry: the Serial Killer" and it is old cake by now.

I think its probably true that the movie business attracts some "damaged people." They would never harm or kill somebody, but they DO enjoy making fantasies about such things. These people were always there (Hitchcock and Peckinpah may have been two), but they've multiplied a hundred-fold in the age of "Fangoria" and "Aint It Cool News," and most of them lack true talent. They are to be taken with a grain of salt, artistic-pretensions-wise.

The torture and torment do not go on and on. It's actually fairly mild. The husband gets hit in the knee with a golf club. Once. You don't see it happen. Add somehow this one blow leaves his knee a bloody, broken mess. How exactly do you hit someone in the knee with a driver (through his pants) and draw blood? It was overwrought and not believable as was much of the film and so the entire purpose of the film is defeated. I could never take it seriously. The scene with the one guy rewinding the movie with the remote just felt like I was watching another clumsy, self-important director embarrassing himself. If the rest of the movie had felt authentic then this "oh by the way it's a movie" trick might have had some shock value. It wasn't and it didn't.

Oh.

Jeez, the reviewer made it seem like this thing is wall-to-wall torture of the principals. She was "shaking" after seeing it.

I realize, of course, that a movie can maintain an unrelenting cruelty of manner without much on-screen gore. And I do understand that the film centers on the menace of the entire family, including a child and a pet.

So I can only assume it is still meant to be 'upscale torture porn."

As to the self-importance of the director, the maker of an art film invariably begs the question: is the art "real", or pretentious. Is the maker a real artist? Or is the emperor wearing no clothes?

Its rather a conundrum, for as soon as the filmmaker decides NOT to make an entertainment narrative film, and the film reveals its "art film intentions" (by say, ending with no ending at all; or by having a killer rewind the movie he is in to change the plot) his or her artistry is immediately scrutinized.

The real artists make it. The fake artists don't.

But which is which?