Funny Games

Michael Haneke, 1997

IMDB

4/5

There is inexplicable evil in the world. We have seen it in the headlines, have to endure stories of home invasions, torture, assault, etc. We try to come up with explanations for people's horrible behavior. Their abusive upbringing, past sexual abuse, lack of a father figure.

Funny Games quickly introduces you to family trio of Anna, Georg and their young son in their car on their way to their vacation home in the country. As they try to guess classical pieces playing on CD's, you see that they are a classy family that enjoy each others company. When they arrive at the home, you see that they want nothing more than to just let loose and spend some time relaxing, once again in each others company. The walls and gate at the end of the driveway almost seem completely unnecessary, as the surrounding inhabitants look they should all belong to a country club. And they probably do.

But when the evil couple works their way into the home, everything about their intentions feels icy cold and calculating. You've already grown to like the family of three, what's not to like? You even like their dog. But what transpires is pure evil. A rigidly tense sequences of events of unforgiving brutality. The scariest people in the world are undoubtedly the ones who have nothing to lose. In a way the sinister duo here are more frightening, because they are seemingly one of the more accurate depictions of pure sociopaths ever put on film. When the fourth wall is broken, it sends chills down your spine. You will spend a portion of the film questioning possible missed opportunities, probably playing out the scenario in your head of what you would do. But we don't really know do we? Until it happens to us, and after watching a film like this you will certainly be locking your doors at night. But is it enough? Is that what's the most horrifying part about this movie? These people, like the pair here, if they weren't able to work their way through the gate... would they have given up? One would assume no. Sometimes you are just the unlucky one that left a light on at the wrong time. Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong week to take a vacation. Sometimes it's not just about someone feeling wronged in some way. Sometimes it's completely impersonal. As mentioned earlier, there is pure evil in the world. There are some people walking the earth who are just downright maniacal. We all like to believe that we live in a world where there is a certain sense of justice. Funny Games is one of the more terrifying films ever made because it challenges the conventions.

Incendies

Denis Villeneuve, 2010

IMDB

4/5

Every family has their secrets. The secrets can vary in severity. Some are innocent, like a mother that had gone on a momentary shoplifting excursion decades earlier. She lets it slip out over a dinner where she drank one too many glasses of wine with her college-aged kids. They all laugh about it, “oh mom!”. But some are more painful. Infidelity, buried under years of silence. Some are incomprehensible. Abuse, confinement, torture. Rarely are family secrets as brutal as the Marwan family secrets. Instead of discovering the secrets from their mother directly, they must learn about them from her last will and testament as her former employer / notary reads it all to them. Their mother was a woman that they appear to have never known fully, a woman that they struggled to understand. Daughter Jeanne is more restrained as she attempts to process it all, while twin brother Simon sits frustrated. Like most people, they assume the whole last will and testament process would be a rather efficient one. One where they could simply go through the typical procedure and get some closure and move on with their lives.

Their search for the newly discovered, unknown blood relatives leads them on an emotional journey, mostly traveled by Jeanne while Simon sits with it all for a while. The film is largely this search for answers. Villeneuve is a filmmaker not afraid to make his audiences endure some of the details. He is unrestrained, unfiltered, unapologetic. Because of this, Incendies itself is a difficult film to watch at times. The story itself is heavy. As the layers of the onion are unpeeled, the emotional toll grows bigger and bigger. Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulindoes a fantastic job with her Jeanne character. Empathetic and desperate for answers, you can see the weight growing on her. She must retrace steps of her mothers past, completely oblivious to the fact that they are places that her mother was so desperate to get away from. Her mother was so determined to create a new life for herself and her family. She was so determined to provide a life for her children that would differ from her own. A life without the same struggles, the same pain, the same subjection, the same drudgery. But while she was able to geographically escape the torture of her past, she was clearly never able to fully escape it psychologically. She must have realized in her final days that her children must know the truth, must know their true lineage. An exploration into the idea of future generations carrying their ancestor’s past, whether they like it or not. The story is a persevering attempt to seek closure, and you seek it as much as the Marwan twins do. You get the closure you’re looking for, leaving you wondering if it’s even enough after such a gripping story reveals such brutal truth.

Chained

Jennifer Chambers Lynch, 2012


3/5

Lynch directs this torture-horror picture about a serial killer who traps his victims with his taxi cab and brings them to his house to kill them. He uses a boy, son of a past victim, as a slave in his home to help clean up his messes and work on his scrapbook which details his slayings.

Lynch's work is probably the creative equivalent of bringing Eli Roth home on a date to meet her father David. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Just different from a film that her father would make, and of course she is going to be forced to endure countless comparisons from the film community given the impact that David Lynch has had on modern cinema. She has certainly picked up some of the chops, while the film is quite disturbing at times it still maintains an artful quality to it. D'Onofrio disappears into his role as Bob, proving that he can become an even more involved killer than his character in The Cell. His victim, Rabbit (Eamon Farren), maintains a very obvious sympathetic edge throughout the film, as he sits in the run down shack malnourished eating the scraps left behind by Bob. When it comes to the attention to set design, the serial killer's house is so chilling the Fedex guy would be afraid to place a package on the front steps. The visual canvas of the film is laid out using a lot of bleak colors, and when you are in the presence of some light it's usually a circa 1970's lamp providing a disconcerting glow throughout the filthy shack. The windows are boarded up. The basement, which is home to the remains of the many victims, is lit only and ironically by Christmas lights. Night falls, and the glow of fluorescent-lit "Comfort" written on the top of the Taxi Cab provides the same tension you feel when trapped in the house with the monster. Lynch not only plays off of visual cues but also with sound as well. There is a very present bass-driven hum throughout the film, maintaining a sense of impending horror. To sum it all up... it's a film that will appeal to the horror fan, but anyone that's planning a re-watch really needs a psychological evaluation.