Funny Games

It’s once more unto the breach for Austrian director Haneke, whose shot-for-shot, English-language remake of his own Funny Games (1997) implies that people will pay for an insult twice; after all, that’s what they always do with a remake or a sequel. Want a synopsis? Sorry. Either version is best seen with as little foreknowledge as possible. Suffice it to say that both movies involve families at summer homes—here in pretty Head of the Harbor, Long Island—contending with unwanted visitors. The primary pleasure of the new version is the superbly subtle Watts, who gives the movie an emotional center that Haneke carves up with razor precision. The film remains booby-trapped with implausibilities (no land phone?), coy formal manipulation (except in a few pointed instances, violence is off-screen) and a one-size-fits-all gimmick to silence quibblers (the infamous remote-control scene)