If there was a film that would capable of reaching out of the TV and disemboweling you, Funny Games (1997) by Michael Haneke is that movie.

Everything about this movie is sinister. Mind you, if it were judged solely on content it would receive no harsher than a PG-13 rating. Friends, do not be fooled.

I got up from watching this film with my hands on my head. I could not believe what I'd just spent an hour and forty eight minutes watching. This was more raw than Full Metal Jacket, scarier than Alien, far more bleak than The Thing and in a different league of evil surpassing Silence Of the Lambs.

But

This film reared back and bitch slapped every notion of conventional film. The implied violence is gruesome, yet hardly a single violent act was depicted. The language is for the most part cordial and without vulgarity. There is nudity but none shown. The long takes were agonizing. The editing is decisive and obligatory. The acting is superb. The viewer gets no satisfaction. Even when one of the villains gets shot in the chest with a shotgun point blank, another villain scrambles for the remote control to the TV in the room, presses rewind and the scene replays again this time with the other villain not being shot. No special effects. No explanation. It's like the villains not only control what is happening to the actors, but also control the entire narrative. The 'fourth wall' is broken several times by the villains just to remind the viewer there is nothing they can do to stop them.

It's a feeling of helplessness and attachment like I've never felt to a character before. I yearned and nearly cried with the victims and I hated with all my heart the villains. Funny Games surveys the cultures lust for violence then force feeds that violence to the viewer without any of the tidy little Hollywood garnish they are accustomed to. Unrelenting and unstoppable.