Todd’s Movie Blog

Let me start out by saying that I have not seen Funny Games, and I’m sure many will say I can’t have anything to say about it.  It’s a valid point.  My point is that after having read about it online from various review sites, it is something that doesn’t appeal to me.  I like horror films, but most that have come out in the last decade just leave me uninterested.  I like a scary film that follows one of Hitchcock’s most important rules, you can put your protagonist through every kind of hardship and abuse a director can think of, as long as he comes out okay at the end, otherwise the audience will feel cheated for having sat through the film.  Films like Funny Games turn this on it’s head by having people tortured, humiliated and killed while the villains get away with at the end, all for the sake of making a point about violence and Hollywood cliches, not mention boat loads of money catering to the tastes of the very audience they are criticizing.  No matter how well made and acted the film is, it is still no different than any of the other torture porn films like Saw or Hostel.  As for the use of torture in a film as a way of making a statement against it, that is just a valid as when Tom Laughlin used violence to criticize violence in Billy Jack, which is to say when all the preachy is done, what shows on the screen is still glorification of what they supposed to be condemning.