I didn't quite follow the argument but thought the film was superficial.

Strange, here are people discussing StarWars and Spiderman, even going to see the movie, and Funny Games supposed to be superficial. I thought it was very clever done (except maybe the rewinding part), playing and fooling around with the viewers expectation of a (violent) film. The treatment of violence is a new one i think, and really worth seeing. Also I liked "The Piano Teacher", and is worth seeing. Rather spend bucks on these then on StarWars or SpiderMan, arthur