Michael Haneke	...	(Director)
Michael Haneke	...	(Writer)
Susanne Lothar	...	Anna
Ulrich Mühe	...	Georg
Arno Frisch	...	Paul
Frank Giering	...	Peter
Stefan Clapczynski	...	Schorschi
Doris Kunstmann	...	Gerda
Christoph Bantzer	...	Fred
Wolfgang Glück	...	Robert
Susanne Meneghel	...	Gerdas Schwester
Monika Zallinger	...	Eva
Jürgen Jürges	...	Cinematographer

Comments: White short shorts (we're talking John Stockten short), no socks and deck shoes, white gloves and an ivy-league education. That's creepy for a serial killer. Said outfit and his friend Butthead make a bet with the vacationing family that they will be dead in 12 hours. This is one of the creepiest films I've seen.

All the pretentious talk about "making a film that sends a clear message about violence, and the audience's view and involvement with violence on film" is NONSENSE. Where does that kind of silliness come from? There is nothing didactic or pedantic about this film. It is terror for terror's sake.

One of the 'synopses' states "the viewers are forced ... to share a certain complicity with the criminals." How's that? Wouldn't that be true of watching any film? Is it because the director breaks the 'fourth wall'?

When this film was over I didn't contemplate my complicity in media violence, I applauded the writer, director and actors for giving me a great ninety minutes of terror.

•••



Summary: Two seemingly well-educated young men, who call each other Paul and Peter among other names, approach a family on vacation. They are, apparently, friends of the neighbors, and, at the beginning, their true intentions are not known. But soon, the family is imprisoned and tortured in its own house violently, which the viewers are forced mostly to imagine and to share a certain complicity with the criminals. It might be some kind of game with the lives of husband, wife, son, and dog, but why are they doing it?