Starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. Rated 14A. Opens Friday, March 14, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

The violence in Michael Haneke’s universe isn’t entirely senseless, but it certainly seems that way to its unlucky victims. In Funny Games (the writer-director’s American remake of his 1997 Austrian original), nemesis falls on the Farber family, three privileged urban individuals looking forward to a week or two in their upscale country residence. For George (Tim Roth), Ann (Naomi Watts), and young Georgie (Devon Gearhart), everything abruptly changes when their home is invaded by two creepily polite preppies, Paul (Michael Pitt) and Peter (Brady Corbet). While wearing the type of white gloves once sported by Mickey Mouse, these exquisite vandals proceed to commit one atrocity after another—but usually with perfect manners.

Haneke always felt that his original should have been set in America, and he goes out of his way to throw in tidbits of pop culture (the home invaders sometimes refer to each other as Beavis and Butthead, and their favourite adjective is “awesome”). As for George and Ann, they are neither Harrison Ford nor Sigourney Weaver. In this situation, their love of classical music and obviously ample financial resources prove to be of no use at all.

As always in Haneke’s cinema, there are metafictional moments when the characters address the camera instead of each other. Still, for all its art-house fanciness, Funny Games is very much an on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller. This fact, though, doesn’t prevent the filmmaker from echoing Kafka’s belief that although justice might exist, we are not its beneficiaries.