I say that anybody who sat through the original and then thought: “Holy shit! A shot-for-shot remake of this movie about two psychopaths who torture and kill a nice suburban family and TOTALLY get away with it CAN’T MISS!! So what if it went nowhere in its subtitled release! It’s bound to be a hit with Naomi Watts and American voices!” is a total idiot with oatmeal for brains, and if he or she is making the financial decisions for a corporation, that corporation needs and deserves to die. Which Tartan did.
The remake was not really necessary as I think it was being sold as just another torture-porn movie for which there have been too many examples (although being 1 is too many).
The original could be watched by movie enthusiasts who don’t mind the subtitles and simply ignored by those who want more Hostel crap. In that light, where the film was an exercise in testing the voyeurism of the audience and shaming them for watching, even after the obvious cheats, was to me, an appreciated one. I don’t know that I need to see the movie again, except maybe to break it down into its components, but I found it powerful and effective.
My brother was a production assistant on the American remake of Funny Games. The director would literally set up every single scene by watching the German DVD frame by frame. He thought that making an American horror movie by stealing his previous movie would make him rich and famous. It sounded like a dumb idea to me from day 1.
However, I did enjoy both versions of the film. It was a very unique concept, which I wished would happen more in the industry.
I think the movie failed to work in terms of its goal of shaming audiences about watching violence. I know when I watched the original (haven’t seen the remake, why should I bother, it’s a shot for shot remake) I just wanted to see the psychopaths get worked over real good and the family saved. I realize that the director thought my feelings should make me feel ashamed, but I don’t feel ashamed. I live in the real world, not the film world. Read the papers sometime. Serial killers get caught all the time, but not until after they’ve killed a dozen or several dozen people. And we probably don’t catch all of them. So all of the shit in “Funny Games” happens in real life, and they get away with it in real life. A lot. I know that, most people who aren’t art house directors know that. We look for relief from such a grim reality in the movie house, not an attempt to shame us about liking to see the serial killers get their just desserts. So the movie was a flop in every sense.
I haven’t seen either one, but I admit I kind of wanted the U.S. version to succeed because I met Brady Corbet a couple of times and he seemed like a really sweet & smart kid and I wish him well. But hey, he’ll get other work.