Funny Games

From Austrian director Michael Haneke comes this viscera-numbing film of bourgeois impotence and subversion. A middle-class couple (Georg and Anna) arrive with their son and dog at their fancy vacation home and are immediately set upon by two young thugs dressed as caddies. Immaculately groomed, ingratiatingly polite, these rosy-cheeked scumbags make the Nazis look like a bunch of pussies. They bludgeon the dog, break Georg's kneecaps, force Anna to strip -- and they're just getting started.

Haneke directs this perfect piece of perversity with an almost clinical hand, devoid of sentiment, sympathy, or manipulation, and with little explicit violence. The acting is also superb, particularly Suzanne Lothar's Anna, who at her most distraught resembles a Cindy Sherman portrait. Haneke's meta-cinematic decision to have one character speak directly to the camera may strike some as a touch clever. No matter, this is still the most frightening film you will ever see: unforgettably sadistic, utterly plausible, and totally fucking terrifying.

-- Peg Aloi