The desensitising nature of popular culture is a theme that recurs throughout most of Michael Haneke's films, but rarely has it been more chillingly debated than in this almost nonchalant study of dysfunction and death. Technically, the tactic of viewing the world through a camcorder lens may not be original. But the dispassionate way in which Arno Frisch - a spoiled but neglected teenager who subsists on violent movies - murders the stranger he has lured to the family home is as stupefyingly horrific as the callous passivity with which his parents learn of the crime. It's a subtly disturbing experience and much less calculating than Haneke's later movies.