HALF-DROWNED HOUND 
Funny Games U.S.
Ah, Funny Games. A movie I am very normal about and have never ever been bitter about people missing the point of.
The creator, Michael Haneke, claimed that Funny Games wasn't meant to be horror, and that he had intended to make a movie that's pointless. Thankfully, he fucked up real bad and created an arthouse horror film that directly interrogates the audience about why they want to be voyeurs to a graphic display of violence against an innocent family, complete with the only 4th wall breaks I've ever appreciated in horror. I don't know, why am I here, watching a 10-minute-long shot of two parents mourning the son who was killed in front of them?
The answer to that is, first and foremost, the acting. Everyone does a brilliant job- Michael Pitt in particular is fabulous as a skeevy, indomitable sadist- but the most impressive performance has to be Naomi Watts'. Am I biased? Of course, but my point still stands that she absolutely shines in this role, to an almost concerning amount. It's an exhausting movie to watch; I imagine it must have been doubly so to actually do the acting. The pain she- and the rest of the cast- portray feels so horribly real; it's impossible to not be enmeshed with the characters when the pain is so unrestrained, so ... ugly? In one particular scene, Watts has her own snot rubbed onto her face and hair- even in the small details, Funny Games refuses to let you see it for anything but what it is, and that certainly means no pretty crying.
Nothing about Funny Games is meant to be appealing, from the lack of onscreen deaths to the complete desexualization of what other horror movies would be eroticizing. Far from the fanservice of The Ring, Watts' stint in her underwear is only ever portrayed as humiliating; the act of stripping isn't even shown onscreen, focusing instead on her face as she bursts into tears. This is, of course, the point of it: why bother reflecting on your bloodlust if you're still being rewarded for watching? Instead, you're subjected to the victims' rawest feelings, their deepest trauma portrayed for what it really is: trauma, abject and insurmountable. For anyone who knows me, this should be obvious as the selling point for me: the tragedy of it all. I much prefer tragedy to scares in horror, and Funny Games scratches that itch until it bleeds. (Yes, I understand that that makes me part of the problem, even if I'm coming at it from a less bloodthirsty and weirdly horny place.)
As someone who's very much into film analysis- though whether I'm good at it is a different question entirely- I also have to appreciate the layers. Like I said, Funny Games fails to be pointless, purposefully or not. It's about violence and misogyny! It's about politeness and social rules as a trap! It's about autism...? It's about a lot of things, or it can be if the audience wants it to be, and I can (and do) spend hours picking it apart, to perhaps an obnoxious extent. Being a notorious motif enjoyer, I almost regret that there's not a whole lot to dig into visually, but I feel like it wouldn't be quite the same if the focus were directed to things like that- and Haneke does remember to get a little Freudian with it, which I have to appreciate.
It's always hard to wrap up a review for a movie I care so much about (and in general, since I'm not good with conclusions- sue me, I'm not getting paid), so I'll leave it with this: give it a shot if you can handle it, and if you don't like it, at least don't have bad takes about it where I can see them.