“Funny Games” is a film which emotionally brutalizes the audience via inescapable passive aggressive menace punctuated with occasional actual violence. We never really see the violence but rather have our faces rubbed in the consequences by the incredibly grounded and unflinchingly realistic performances.

The experiment of the film, which seems to be placing the audience into the theater and challenging them to either suffer through the film or permit themselves to escape, is undermined by an ill-advised time-shift stunt which lets the audience off the hook as far as emotional engagement and facing of consequences.