Funny Games

It was Saturday afternoon. 6 degrees outside. There was a painful lack of something good to watch on television.

Mike began scrolling through On-Demand movies.

I called out ones that looked good:
"Juno!"
"No thanks," he said.
"Jaws!"
"For the 3 millionth time? You can't be serious," he replied.
"Cats in the Womb!"
"You hate insides."


Against my wishes and recommendations, he selected Funny Games. Mike sold me on giving the unknown movie a try by saying, "Has Tim Roth and Naomi 'THE RING!!!' Watts in it. You like Tim Roth."


It started slow, with lots of bright light and white walls and quiet. The camera focused on weird things instead of the actors' faces as the family packed to go to their lake house.


When a strange guest of their neighbor's knocks at the door asking to borrow eggs, everything starts to feel tense and then scary. At this point, we hated the movie and planned to turn it off, but wanted to wait until the scene with the weird guy and the eggs ended.


If you make it that far, you won't shut it off. The tension just gets worse, you feel like you can't breathe. If you like thrillers, this is a good sensation, as painful as it is. You have know what happens next. You need this to make sense or be explained.


This movie is likely to leave you annoyed. Or angry. Possibly scared. You may consider purchasing a gun to defend yourself. Or you may do what we did, which was to discuss the decisions we would want each other to make if we were ever confronted with a situation like the one that results from the egg-borrowing.


I do not recommend starting Funny Games at all, no matter how boring your weekend afternoon may be.