A middle-class family arrive at their lake house for a vacation, but before long, two eerily polite young men, Peter and Paul, appear on their doorstep. What begins as an awkward interaction soon spirals into a home invasion when the boys take the family hostage and announce they’re going to play a series of games with them. The intruders subject their victims to arbitrary rules, sadistic manipulation, and psychological torture, all while maintaining an unnervingly casual demeanour. Occasionally breaking the fourth wall, Haneke’s film actively implicates the audience in the (never graphic) onscreen violence, forcing viewers to confront their preconceptions about how cinema works. The results make for a shocking but entirely serious and responsible treatment of a difficult subject.

Notes by David O’Mahony.

Screening as part of Complicit: The Films of Michael Haneke.