Funny Games Isn't Funny!!: Self-Reflexivity in Funny Games and The Cabin in the Woods

                “Funny Games” follows a fairly simple but effectively disturbing plot involving two sociopathic young men come across a typical, well-off family on vacation and brutally torment them. Normally, a movie like this wouldn’t differentiate greatly from other horror movies. However, this movie is a very unique and disturbing execution of a fairly standardized concept. The movie sticks out for one major reason. The film has a distinct lack of actually being funny.

                “Funny Games” is structured to be a double subversion of the straight-faced execution of horror films that have a strong emphasis on sadism. The two villains of the movie often use Brechtian techniques during the movie, like looking at the camera during shot-reverse shot sequences and directly addressing the audience. The movie is aware of its own cinematic properties, and demonstrates this to the viewers. In many horror movies, like “Cabin in the Woods” or “Scream,” the filmmakers use these techniques to add a comedic dimension to their movies. In “Cabin in the Woods,” the movie reflects its own generic awareness by creating a situation within the movie that plays like a standard horror film, while simultaneously showing a scenario where it portrays a secondary setting where the characters are shown to be in control of the former situation. The movie portrays the first set of characters, a group of semi-archetypal college students, as the characters in an in-universe horror story, and the second set of characters, a group of scientists, as the story creators. Jeffrey Sconce wrote that:

What is perhaps most remarkable about Freddy’s Dead [Nightmare on Elm Street 6] and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer… is the way each film uses self-conscious narration and even explicitly self-reflexive devices to encourage rather than question or subvert certain patterns of identification in the viewer. (111)

In non-reflexive movies, the audience tends to identify with the victims of the story. In movies like “Freddy’s Dead” and “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”, Sconce argues that the movies encourage crowds that identify with the more assaultive characters, because those characters are the ones that are made more interesting and entertaining. In these movies, the killers are the ones who show an awareness of the medium (intentional or otherwise), and use it for comedic effect. In “Cabin in the Woods,” the movie uses self-reflexive techniques on both sides of the fourth wall drawn between the two sets of characters, and lampshades the situation for comedy.

                “Funny Games”, on the other hand, uses Brechtian techniques to satirize this concept. Other horror movies use medium awareness to entertain the audience, “Funny Games” uses it to involve and incriminate the audience. In the scene where the two villains (their true names are never revealed, but they are most often mentioned as Paul and Peter) proposed that the family bets their lives, one of the villains, Paul, turns to the camera and asks the audience, “You’re on their side, aren’t you? So, who will you bet with?” The scene isn’t funny. The movie uses this direct defiance of the fourth wall to take the feeling of control away from the audience and subtly guilt them for watching a movie where two psychopaths torture and systematically kill a family for their own amusement. The movie makes the viewer into a character, essentially taking it hostage and forcing them to watch this cruel situation. In addition, the movie also goes out of its way to portray the hostage family beforehand, as inordinately bourgeois. They are designed to be wealthy and boring, making the more proletariat audience member to lose sympathy for them before the horrors in store for them begin. When the movie takes the viewer hostage, it also forced them on the side of the villains. “Funny Games” is a horror film that shines a mirror on itself and on the audience that was willing to watch it. The joke’s on us.

Works Cited

Sconce, Jeffrey. "Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity and Contemporary Horror."Film Theory Goes to the Movies. New York: Routledge, 1993. 103-19. Print.

Funny Games. Dir. Michael Haneke. Perf. Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Muhe. Madman Entertainment, 1997. Film.

The Cabin in the Woods. Dir. Drew Goddard. Perf. Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth. Roadshow Entertainment, 2012. Film.