10 Horror Movies Which Broke The Fourth Wall To Scare You

4. Funny Games

The most infamous and ambitious entry on this list, Michel Haneke’s Funny Games was the last in a long string of cinematic provocations from the austere auteur.

Beloved by high art connoisseurs, his earlier effort Benny's Video came close to blaming violent movies for real-life murder and crime. In comparison, this 1997 home invasion horror gave up any pretence of subtlety.

The infamous fourth wall demolishing exercise in meta horror sees a pair of well-spoken blokes break into a family's vacation home and proceed to torture and kill them. The gimmick, because even high art auteurs need one, is that these killers talk straight to the viewer during the film.

Like a pretentious Austrian Wayne's World.

What begins as some smirking asides soon turns to a disturbing Loony Tunes cartoon as the pair resort to rewinding the film's action at one point. It's around this stage that viewers can choose between laughing at the audacity or solemnly nodding along to the film's sledgehammer-subtle point of "those movies will rot your brain, kiddo".