Funny Games: Satire and juxtaposition

    Carroll was right to say that Horror thrives on the narrative form, At the heart of this "drama of disclosure"  Carroll speaks of this need for some sort of motivation for the monster. Our curiosity peaks as we try to make sense of it. It is a part of our human nature to try to make sense of the world, and it is a similar passion that drives science.
    Whenever it comes to horror movies the motivation and reason for "the monster's" existence is usually something that we find out close to the end of the movie so that we might get some sort of satisfaction to our world of logic. Funny Games however, completely flips this idea on it's head. The movie takes the normal conception of a scary movie and strips it of all pretext, bringing the "Paradox of Horror" to the front of the stage. As Carroll suggests, we are drawn into these narratives to find out why "The Monster" exists in the first place. And yet the reason that the evil brothers and their twisted narrative exist is because of the fact we are drawn to them. This overwhelmingly ironic circular reasoning is what makes Funny Games almost as much of a comedy as it is a horror. Funny Games is in fact a satire on the whole genre, which the director has made quite obvious in his decision to have the brothers break the fourth wall in order to essentially say to the audience "Well, this is what you wanted, right? are you happy now?"
   A perfect example of this attraction to the repulsive is at the very beginning with the grindcore style music juxtaposing the calming classical music that plays in the car. Its so jarring and nonsensical that the reaction is the perfect mix of scary and funny. This does a great job of setting the tone of the movie, because the exact same thing can be said of the brothers' calm demeanor and their sociopathic cruelty. The movie goes on to compare the genre of horror to a kind of game that the victims play with the "monsters." In other words, when we see the cliche scene of a potential victim exploring a mysterious noise from a dark basement, we often think "wrong move." Funny Games satirizes this idea by completely undressing it and laying out the "rules" to the victims. This is playfully done with metaphor, as we can see after the pain that is inflicted on the father with a golf club. Paul says "you're the ship's captain so everyone on board has to do what you say. These kinds of comparisons indeed make the movie feel very much like a game". In other words one of the  "monster's" mysterious motivations that Carroll says draws us to the genre would, in this case, be the fun of the game. This is yet another striking juxtaposition that is very much comedic, but in a somewhat repulsive way.