Director plays games with horror genre in 'Funny Games'

I'm guessing that most people will hate "Funny Games" with the level of passion usually reserved for toppling governments or creating new religions.

Two sociopaths wearing matching all-white outfits (right down to Mickey Mouse mittens) invade the lakeside summer home of an upscale couple and their young son, then set about torturing them with guns, knives, golf clubs and remote controls.

Why?

Why not? is their answer.

The finale of the bluntly nihilistic "Funny Games" makes the finale of "No Country for Old Men" seem like a happily-ever-after ending from a Disney film.

But this is hardly your regular, run-of-the-kill torture porn in the vein of "Touristas" or "Hostel."

"Funny Games" opens with Ann and George (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) and their son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart), failing to pick up on the tiny clues that there's something wrong when they say hi to their neighbors, and they act really weird in the presence of two young men.

Later, those two lads -- Paul and Peter (politely creepy Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) -- unobtrusively slip into Ann's house before revealing their true evil motives.

"I don't know what kind of game you're playing!" Ann shouts to the guys in white. Why, "funny" games, as in sadistic psychological and physical torments for the sheer amusement of the duo.

For almost two hours, "Funny Games" leaves in the dust previous visceral home invasion movies such as "Straw Dogs" and forces us to squirm in horror at the detached, nonchalant ways in which Paul and Peter (who also call themselves Tom and Jerry and other assorted nicknames) inflict harm on this innocent family.

"Funny Games" is written and directed by twisted German filmmaker Michael Haneke, maker of the macabre 2005 hit "Cache." In "Funny Games," he has virtually remade scene-for-scene his 1997 original German horror film of the same title. (This remake includes minor updates, such as cell phones.)

Haneke is a master of creeping out audiences not so much with horrific violence, but with sound and benign visuals. Almost all the brutal acts in "Funny Games" occur off-camera. While that sounds like a cop-out for a true horror aficionado, Haneke's use of implied violence is more excruciating and pulse-pounding than all of the explicit bloodletting in the "Friday the 13th" series.

Plus, Haneke has strange method to his deranged madness. "Funny Games" appears to play out as a standard Hollywood thriller where the most egregious acts of carnage can be tolerated, provided the hero/victim strikes back at the villain and delivers a sense of justice.

In a bold act of utterly absurd, meta-storytelling, "Funny Games" actually reverses the plot that conforms to our expectations, then drags the story into such abject nihilism that might freak Cormac McCarthy himself.

"Funny Games" becomes an eye-blanching criticism of how we accept torture as entertainment, provided that certain narrative rules are followed. Haneke throws those rules away, leaving us, the glazed-eyed viewers, to think about and hate his movie as we will.

But keep this in mind if you see "Funny Games": It's a genuine horror film, designed to repulse and terrify. And Haneke happily obliges.

"Funny Games"

Rating: 3 stars

Starring: Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt, Tim Roth, Brady Corbet and Devon Gearhart

Directed by: Michael Haneke

Other: A Warner Independent Pictures release. Rated R (violence, language). 110 minutes.