20 Best Horror Movies Since 2000

Michael Haneke is one of the foremost contemporary filmmakers primarily interested in creating transgressive movies which simultaneously play with the format of cinema while working to undermine audience expectations. Along with Gapar Noe and Lars von Trier, he's widely considered to be one of the enfant terribles of modern movie making.

His 2007 remake of his own film Funny Games, starring Michael Pitt, Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, is an exemplary example of his approach to violence in cinema. On the surface a home invasion horror/thriller, Funny Games begins conventionally but soon starts to flip those conventions on their heads. Haneke toys with the audience just as he toys with the victims of the two psychopaths terrorising what was supposed to be an idyllic family vacation.

Funny Games is an unusually sadistic film which often polarises viewers (one scene in particular involving a remote control seems to be the point at which either you get what Haneke is trying to say or dismiss it as an annoying pretension). But it is also exceptionally well crafted, and regardless of what you make of the (funny) games Haneke is playing with, it's hard not to admire his consummate craftsmanship.