Naomi Watts and Brady Corbet in Funny Games Courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures

READ MORE: Funny Games review

Michael Pitt (The Dreamers, Last Days) and Brady Corbet (Mysterious Skin, Thirteen) appear with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth in Funny Games, the English-language remake of Michael Haneke's 1997 German-language thriller by the same name. Here, Haneke has recreated his own film shot-by-shot with meticulous precision, reviving the script, sets, costumes — everything but the actors from the original production. Although the story is about an upper-class family (Watts, Roth and child actor Devon Gearhart) on holiday who are set upon by two handsome, charming and white-gloved psychopathic young men (Pitt and Corbet), the film is more about filmgoers' expectations than it is about the fate of the characters themselves. In the past, Haneke, the director of Cache and The Piano Teacher, has shown a fascination with the medium of film, and Funny Games is his most overt experiment on the subject. As Pitt and Corbet's sadistic characters play their games with the hapless family they've chosen to prey upon, Haneke himself begins playing funny games with what audiences have come to expect from a thriller. The director and cast sat down with us to share their thoughts on film remakes, legendary villains, Halloween costumes and Naomi Watts.

SPOILER ALERT: The director and cast reveal some of the film's unexpected plot twists during their conversations below.

Director Michael Haneke

Why do an American remake of your own film ten years later. You said it was a distinctly American story — can you expand upon that?
Already the title is Funny Games — it's an English title. And another indication is that if you look at the house that's used in the first film, although it plays in Austria, it's really not an Austrian house, no one would live in such a house in Austria. So it was always really meant for an English-speaking audience, for an audience that consumes that violence. And so because the film was in German, it never really reached the audience for which it was intended and then I was offered the opportunity to do an English-speaking remake. Also, last but not least, the film is more up-to-date than it ever was, compared to ten years ago.

What are your thoughts about how this film reaches audiences and reaches people who are potentially engaged in this kind of violence? Do you think that the film reveals people to themselves — reveals their own propensity to violence to them, or do you think the film might act as a suggestion of [violent] behavior?
Of course, I'd rather think [it is] the first of your two options. Obviously, there is no remedy against misunderstandings and there's nothing I can do if some crazy lunatic decides to run around with white gloves and torture people to death. I'm afraid there's very little I can do about that. But certainly the underlying thought was the option you gave first. I think the alienation effects that I have throughout the movie force the viewer to self-reflect on his or her role.

Do you think audiences are smart?
I do believe that audiences are far more intelligent than one usually suspects. You unfortunately usually dumb them down with the productions that you offer them.

Do think there's a Marxist element here of class warfare?
[laughs] What class would fight against what in the film? I mean, the boys, the bad guys, come from the same societal background as the victims, no?