Funny Games US is Austrian director Michael Haneke's shot-for-shot carbon copy of his own 1997 Funny Games — an extraordinarily-disturbing movie of relentless sadism and psychological torture made in German.

This English-language version is simply Haneke's postmodern denunciation of the popularity of gratuitous Hollywood violence for a wider audience — in particular, Americans.

A bourgeois couple drives up to their vacation home with cute son and dog in tow (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth are excellent as the parents). Two sinister white-clad blonds — the loathsomely-stunning Michael Pitt and the surprisingly-capable Brady Corbet — interrupt their perfect lives. It's pretty clear how this movie's going to pan out. Therein lies The Bait.

Torture is served up next as the audience's fears are manipulated by the obnoxious use of confrontational cinematic tools such as "breaking the fourth wall" to remind us directly of our own bloodthirsty desire for cheap thrills.

The fact that the unfathomable motiveless violence is pointedly never explained increasingly draws you in, infuriating and implicating you, the viewer.

As you struggle with the deafening silence of the film and squirm in your seat, you start to realise that the only funny games are the ones the director is playing with you. And there you have it — The Kill. Baited, tortured and killed, just like the victimised family you have been watching on screen.

Unlike the poor sods, you have a choice not to play by not buying a ticket. And thus, Haneke's film lives and dies on its own gimmick, narrowly missing the mark of luring the mainstream crowds. Still, it is worth a watch if you have the patience to sit through a film that is more film dissertation than movie. - TODAY/sh