Perspectives: 5 Reasons Why Funny Games is Postmodern

1: The film challenges the ideological genre of horror films. The director Michael Haneke draws the audience in but deviates the expectation of the horror genre. In the horror genre the viewer is expected to see the most brutal scenes, Haneke has deconstructed and flipped this making the most macabre parts of the film unimportant to its understanding showing it as an anti-horror horror film. A loud gunshot is heard but shown while one of the Antagonists Paul is seen casually making a sandwich.

2: Haneke appropriated his own film as the original was German, Haneke remade it shot for shot for the American audience with American actors.

3: Heneke also breaks the boundaries of horror genre with the set design and costumes, usually we are familiar with the antagonists wearing dark colours and the set reflecting the scenes which unfold in horror with dark hues prevalent, however Paul and Peter the main protagonists are seen wearing white which represents purity and innocence while the house is also of light colours.

4: Parts of the film are non linear and fragmented as Paul and Peter make a bet with the family that they will be dead or alive before sunset, Paul turns to the camera and asks the viewer "who are you betting on". Paul and Peter are also seen towards the end of film dictating the pastiched way in which the horror genre is structured saying"struggle is boring" and "we want a real ending with a plausible plot". The most unfathomable scene in the film is after the mother Ann shoots Peter and then Paul picks up the remote to the TV and rewinds the whole scene to revert back to before her grabbing the gun to which he then now knows to reach for it before she gets the change to kill his sidekick Peter.

5: Funny Games is a simulacra of film. The ending sees Paul and Peter saying "But isn’t fiction real" “Why?” “Well you can see it in the movie, right?” fiction is described as not being real but if our viewing of something is the only connection to the outside world, and if both “fiction” and “reality” can be seen, how can someone distinguish between them?. speaking of the self referral parts of Funny Games where Paul speaks to the camera Haneke describes "It allowed me to understand illusion intellectually.”