If you’re a fan of Michael Haneke, the Austrian director of films such as The Piano Teacher and last year’s brilliant thriller Cache, then you’ll be particularly intrigued and excited to know that the trailer for his first English-language movie, Funny Games, has just gone online.
Starring Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet (showing that Thunderbirds isn’t the career graveyard we had all presumed), it’s a remake of Haneke’s own 1997 classic, in which a normal family (Roth and Watts) are taken hostage by two psychopathic teenagers (Corbet and Pitt), who proceed to play a deadly game with them.
The original was a shocking, convention-defying classic, and the remake looks like it won’t deviate too far from that template – which could mean that it may just be hugely controversial when it is released here sometime next year.
By remaking his own movie, Haneke is following in the footsteps of the likes of Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge) and George Sluizer (The Vanishing). Those two didn’t turn out that great (although The Grudge was a hit), but in Haneke we trust – he’s a smart cookie, and by staging Funny Games in America, expect one or two pertinent points to be made about a culture steeped in violence.
Click here to see the trailer, which hints at juicy roles for Watts, Roth and particularly Pitt.