Funny Games And Cannibal Holocaust: Film Analysis

The violence of the films Funny Games and Cannibal Holocaust is perpetrated by human beings. In Funny Games, cruelty is dealt with a heavy but nonchalant hand by highly creepy, unnaturally polite and detached young men who repeatedly call out the audience on their nature and motivations. By asking the audience if we are sated, our thin immersion within the film is broken and we find ourselves suddenly disconnected and forced into introspection. Why are we watching this? Is this entertaining? Even though Cannibal Holocaust turned the perpetrators of violence into something that was superficially and customarily separate from “us” --the victims, and the audience--the same fear of our fellow man was created. No matter how “other” the tribal peoples were, they were human beings and therefore the horror instilled in viewers was that same horror and introspective confusion created by viewing Funny Games. Like Cannibal Holocaust, Funny Games calls to our attention the human capacity for needless cruelty but it also forces us to examine how we filter and …show more content…
This adds to the fear-factor of the film and maintains the clean canvas for commentary and introspection on the audience 's relationship to extreme violence and senseless cruelty. The title of the film and the theme of the young men 's only verbalized explanation for their actions suggests that the filmmakers wish for their audiences to think critically about how they interact with what they see onscreen. We know why we don 't like the sight of blood, gore, and corpses--deep-set instinct for our own preservation from contamination--but because we cannot understand how, as in Funny Games, a person could so casually inflict physical and psychological torture upon and pointlessly slaughter people, it scares us in a deeper, more bone-chilling way--is that what we want from a horror