10 Movies That Ingeniously Subverted Expectations
5. Funny Games
Michael Haneke's Funny Games - and its 2007 English-language remake, also directed by Haneke - seems like a pretty typical thriller on the surface, in which a family are attacked by a pair of young, sadistic home invaders, Peter and Paul (Frank Giering and Arno Frisch).
But Haneke clearly has no interest whatsoever in adding to the heap of exploitative thriller movies flooding the market, opting instead to deliver a film which completely deconstructs the nature of the genre and our own complicity in it.
Haneke lures audiences in with the implication that the family will overpower and defeat their aggressors in the end, but from mere moments in, Haneke readily begins trolling viewers.
Rather than roll the opening titles to a typical thriller score, they're set to Naked City's ear-splittingly cacophonous avante-garde metal track "Bonehead."
Things get more outwardly deconstructionist later on, though. When Peter is shot dead by one of the family members, Paul grabs a nearby TV remote and literally rewinds the movie, giving him a second chance to grab the gun and prevent Peter's death.
Most confronting of all is a bluntly downbeat ending in which the single remaining family member, Anna (Susanne Lothar), is matter-of-factly drowned, before the two boys set their eyes on their next victim.
The film's chillingly provocative final shot sees Paul staring directly into the camera lens as Bonehead once again blares out, seemingly challenging the viewer's expectation that they could find entertainment in such horrific atrocities.
Funny Games certainly isn't for everyone, but as a bold, boundary-pushing challenge to the typical thriller formula, it's really quite sublime.