Now, back in the eighties, they'd classify it as a video nasty and ban it. What it is, is in narrative terms, nothing more than a remake of Straw Dogs (middle class family get attacked) or A Clockwork Orange (working class dumbo thugs kill people for fun).

Don't be fooled by the title either - the last thing Funny Games (U.S.) is.... is funny. Hidden behind a wall of self-justification, loftier than thou artistic pretension spewed out by spineless critics too hamstrung to call this movie out for what it really is - this movie is irredeemable, talentless, amoral trash, but with added extra condescension. Some people may claim its not 'torture porn' (a la 'Hostel', which at least had a modicum of entertainment and characterisation), but that assessment is based simply upon the fact that the movie isn't splattered with blood across the screen.

At heart it is merely a heartless, exploitative, brutal torture movie without any justification for existence, no subtext, no redeeming features whatsoever. Because after all, if it looks like a horror movie, and acts like a horror movie... and no matter ho much pretentious twaddle it pretends to wrap itself up in...its still a dumb, stupid, pointless, needless horror movie.

Most directors that get noticed for making a critically received, but underwatched foreign language film, later get imported into Hollywood and lose the very things that make their work interesting. In this case, firstly there was nothing interesting in the first place to import - and secondly, this westernised remake (by the same director) is a creatively redundant failure on all counts. A shot for shot remake, only in a different language.

The plot is devoid of subtext, meaning or social commentary. Quite simply, a loving family get tortured to death, slowly, agonizingly, and for no reason whatsoever - except possibly boredom, or working class jealousy. Oh, look at this rich people who haven't screwed up their lives with petty crime and meaningles violence ... boo! hiss! how I hate them!

You can consider that a spoiler, but please, if you ever watch this film, you'd thank me for saving you two hours of your life in what is quite definitely the worst film I've ever seen. And I should know - I've seen Inland Empire.

They get killed - by a pair of spoilt (possibly rich, but certainly relatively well educated) dumb white trash hobo's for whom taking a life has as much meaning as an ice cream. All that happens is that a family turn up at their lakeside holiday home, and then a few hours later a couple of young teenage boys from next door turn up asking to borrow some eggs. And then they torture the family to death. That's all there is to it - go watch a loving family die slowly and painfully. the end.

And why? There is no why. Wow, what a level of insightfulness. Random, and pointless violence exists! As if no one had ever thought of that before? Its like watching Saving Private Ryan or Schindlers List, only to then have "WAR IS BAD. AMERICA DOUBLE PLUS GOOD!" intoned over the screen every three minutes in fifteen foot high letters and voiced by Walter Klondike.  Only not as subtle. And even more condescendingly clunky.

Look, if I wanted to be talked down to like a  simpleton, like I had a mental age of two, If I wanted to lectured to condescending by someone who thinks they are so much more loftier than me, I'd just phone up my father.

Of course, we could justify it by wrapping it up in a level of woolly-headed, pointless artistic pretension that pretends to be so much more than it actually is. You could watch the first minute and a half, then lave and reap all the artistic talent that this movie possesses in a mere overhead tracking shot of a car driving along a road. (And, If you are particularly bored, you can play Frogger with that shot too.) . But everything falls apart after that.

Characters only exist as the film needs them to do so - the middle class family are defined only by their widescreen TV and their taste in classical music, and the protagonists only by their white golfing gloves. Characterisation? personality? Both are none existent. Every single character has no past, no personality, just a narrative role to play to the bitter end. Its difficult to care about anyone, you just wish they'd die quicker so that this useless waste of celluloid trash would end sooner. Christ, does this movie never seem to end.

You know its a bad movie when you just want people to get kileld so you can walk out quicker. Don't you? Anyway, for those you who really care :-

- the little boy gets shot in the head in the 55th minute

- the husband ...god, i can't even remember what happens to him, i cared that much. I think they shoot him too, but i can't remember.  (I mean, I could google it, but I can't be bothered. Honestly)

- the wife gets chucked in the lake off a boat, 103 minutes in.

- the two thugs run off and start again with the next house across the lake.

Flat, leaden, unimaginative camera work permeates every shot. There's no technical innovation or imagination here. Just a slow, and meaningless foray into meaningless violence. This film fails to entertain, or educate, or show any insight whatsoever.

Imagine a stern old man pointing his finger at you for two hours solid, wagging it accusatorily and telling you how evil you are, that'd be more fun that sittign through this.

With unsympathetic, uninvolving, characters who you cannot relate to, who exist only as mere cyphers to be dispensed with... and dull, unimaginative camerawork, and a lazy meaningless script, this film probably thinks its such a work of genius and a such a brilliant piece of satire of big blockbuster film making that it forgets that it has become the very thing it has set out to lambast and ridicule.

Lets face it - it ends up disappearing into its own rectum with a level of narcissic self-obsession even David Lynch would baulk at, Funny Games is a complete irredeemable, unwatchable, film with no entertainment value, no artistic merit. All it has is a sense of 'better than thou' moral superiority that sneers at its audience for even watching it, bolstered up with pretension the likes of which even Yoko Ono wouldn't tolerate.

In its (ultimately futile) defence, there are a number of people trying to claim that this film isn't torture porn. Bullshit, utter bullshit. It is, it just pretends it isn't by hiding it away. The end result is a wash of amoral, illeducated, pointless violence.

And then, twenty minutes from the end, it shows itself for being the absolute bullshit it is. Because when the tortured wife saves the day and gets one up on the attacker... the attacker simply just picks up the remote, presses rewind, and ensures that there is no escape, that there is no balancing of the moral scales, just to ensure the bad guys win. Honestly. Have you ever been in a movie theatre before and wanted to shout out 'bullshit' at the screen before? (and no, not because the the superspy has just started surfing and driving around in an invisible supercar......).

A film that breaks its own internal narrative and structure and lunges off into what is blatantly some fantasy bullshit construct just because it wants to lecture us a bit more. Wow, great. Talk down to me a little more, why don't you, o moral superior that you are Mr film director. CLANG!

No one has ever said that before, that watching screen violence makes people really violence. Honestly. Its not as if this is original though - there really isn't a long history of movies which invoke the audience's collusion in watching them as part of the moral problem with violence in society, you know. Honestly, its never been seen before, has it? certainly not in Blow Out, (1979), or Henry: portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986), and definitely not in Natural Born Killers, (1995). Oh no. Well, when the movie started to actively insult its audience at every possibly opportunity, giving them no credit for their intelligence, and treats them like kids, well... what do you expect? Do you expect us to enjoy being lectured and condescended to?

I tell you what, if that is the moral message to this film that needs to be preached - that movie violence is bad - it won't be heard. This film is so locked away in its pretentious guardianista-esque little niche, that the people who enjoy films such as it is attempting to critique will be in the next screen - watching 'Captivity' or 'Saw XVII' some other stupidly violent dreck. They would have given up on this film a long time ago. And why? Because they would be bored by it. They would have walked out on it, because its that unforgivably shit.

This is, quite frankly, the most condescending, abject, irredeemable failure of a film. Filled with dull unimaginative camerawork, unsympathetic characters & clumsy dialogue, its Unengaging, unentertaining, condescending and deeply insulting to anyone with a modicum of moral sensibility.

Sure this film asks a lot of important questions. The most important of which are 'why am i watching this shit?' and 'how did i pay for this crap?'.

They should never let the director near a camera again, lest he drown under the weight of his own underachievement and pretentious condescension. I wouldn't let him film his own weddign lest he invade it with a situationist prank like dressing up as a man size fluffly teddy bear.

Funny Games is the worst film this reviewer has ever seen - or can ever imagine seeing. A complete waste of talent, time, and money in every conceivable way imaginable, and a complete failure on every single level possible.