Funny games Film

Funny games

I recently watched the film funny games with some friends and thought that it was worth putting into my research because of the camera work in the film and how it conveys feelings, and how i could possibly use the techniques in my viral advert.

I watched the original German version of the film not the recent Hollywood remake, the film is quite unknown and is more of a cult film because of its content and it is well known for being quite disturbing and full on. With it not being a Hollywood movie it doesn't have the please everyone feel of a Hollywood movie, I would best describe the film as a horror/thriller but wouldn't really know where to place it.


The film is about a family staying at a holiday home and meet two seemingly nice well off young men asking to borrow eggs but then begin to terrorize the family holding them captive and forcing them to play games for there own amusement, but what this film does differently and most people say is the most disturbing part of the film is that we never see any of the violence they use camera work to make a scene even more tense and disturbing than actually showing whats going on, for example when the men have the family tied up one of them leaves while the other stands guard with a rifle and we just see a shot of the first man casually making a sandwich while in the background we hear shouting and a struggle and finally a gun shot while the camera never moves and the man in shot acts as if nothings happened. In another shot the father of the family is being attacked and all we have is a shot of his wife's face with the sound of the attack going on.

These techniques make you feel worse than if you had possibly seen the actions taking place and this is something i am trying to have in my viral by showing all the action leading up to a bad accident than not getting to see it, showing the viewer something else.

The other things the film is well known for are a technique known as breaking the fourth wall where a character deliberately talks to the camera to acknowledge the presence of the audience like in Malcolm in the middle, it is unusual here because this is technique is usually scene in comedy's so in a film like this it stands out, it is used here in a very sinister way where one of the men talks to the audience asking "what would you do?" and questions if we think the family are going to survive and this is too make the audience a accomplice to the murders the character questions us for watching the film and our motives saying that we are watching to see what he does to the family and that we do not want to see them simply just escape so therefore we must be on his side.

It is a very good film which i would recommend to people interested in film with many other great bits of camera work and parts of the plot that make it stand out from other similar films like "The strangers" but i have not noted them here because they do not really relate to my own project and the techniques i am interested in using.