10 Films That Want You To HATE Them

It is shamelessly cruel, it doesn't play by the rules and it is far from funny.

Michael Haneke's Funny Games doesn't just treat viewers to a pair of hateful, spiteful, bratty antagonists - Peter and Paul - terrorising a middle-class family at their house by the lake, it also refuses to play by the rules of cinema altogether.

The film's main concern is with the malicious 'games' played by the antagonists, and the rules that they must follow - a stand-in for the rules of the audience who consume and fund and obliquely participate in violent films and media. While this may be a worthy pursuit from a thematic perspective, the audience can't help but feel furious and cheated when, as the protagonists triumph over Peter, Paul grabs the TV remote, rewinding the action and breaking the fourth wall - a course of action that leads to the death of the family.

While it may seem odd to include two films for a single entry, it is because they are almost identical. Believing the American market to be the ideal home for Funny Games, but having experienced the USA's general apathy towards subtitles with his 1997 release, Haneke drafted in Tim Roth and Noami Watts for an English language shot-for-shot remake intended to draw in Western audiences.

Lucky us.