The irony of this movie coming out now is that the first Funny Games was released well before the recent wave of horror and "torture porn", and now the English remake comes after the genre has started to fade, acting almost as bookends.

If you've seen the original then you pretty much will know what to expect since Haneke chose to do a shot-for-shot translation including all of the major beats and twists. It's kind of amusing to think that the controversial filmmaker had the audacity to do this, as if he were saying, "My original movie was so perfect, why change a thing?" On the other hand, it's equally fascinating to think that he would take on the challenge of making the same movie a second time, considering how hard it is to make movies the FIRST time. The thought of what must have gone into recreating each shot and moment from the original and making it work in English is pretty amazing, and indeed, it does gain something when it's in your native language.

Obviously, there was more money put in this one as well, and the remake definitely looks better, but what really puts it over the top are the performances by Michael Pitt and Naomi Watts--and less face it, seeing the beautiful actress spend much of the movie in her bra and panties can't be a bad thing! When I heard that Pitt was in the movie, I assumed he was playing the role of Peter, the more timid of the attackers, because the actor who played him in the original movie could be Pitt's twin. In fact, when Brady Corbet first appears, I assumed that he was Pitt. But instead, Pitt took on the far nastier role of Paul and no pun intended, but he really kills in that role, creating a really frightening antagonist. Tim Roth is also good as the family's paternal unit, but it's the one case where his performance isn't as effective as that of Ulrich Mühe who played the part in the first movie, and Roth's American accent gets pretty dodgy especially in the more emotional scenes.

While I'm hesitant to say more in fear of giving things away to those who haven't seen the original movie, the reactions to the movie at the Egyptian were fairly mixed, maybe because of the big twist that happens just before the end of the movie. It probably threw a few people off, at least those who had gotten used to how the typical Hollywood slasher horror flick tends to end. Some might be surprised when they realize later that the most violent and gory scenes of the movie mostly happen off camera, but the movie's such a psychological mind-f*ck that you really leave it thinking you've seen some of the most horrendous gory violence ever committed to film. I'm sure that seeing the movie with an audience helped enhance my experience over having seen the original on DVD, and that knowing what's going to happen allowed me to appreciate the remake far more than I did the original, if only for the craft that went into making a shot-by-shot remake.

Either way, Warner Independent should be able to find a much bigger audience for the remake than the original, especially with the jarring red band trailer that played in a loop on screens at the party earlier that evening. Seeing the movie again in this new format certainly gave me more appreciation for Haneke's disturbing original as well.