Nero’s funhouse is a well-upholstered meatgrinder, complete with tacky upscale furniture and fixtures, like the nude, Korova Milk Bar-style mannequins that bookend the living room’s flat-screen. If they don’t get enough votes, they must play degrading party-game-style contests, like “Piñata Party,” where one contestant is tied up and attacked with a spiked baseball bat the other contestant (the one with the bat) is blindfolded and made to wear sound-proof headphones.
So we’re stuck with Ula and the others as they fight among themselves and struggle to win the approval of Internet rubberneckers. The FBI is aware of Nero’s online game show, but cannot locate it in time to save contestants like Ula from killing each other. Ula is, after all, looking directly at the camera and flashing us from inside a “confession booth.” At the time, she’s trying to convince House of Fun viewers to vote for her so she won’t have to compete in the next elimination challenge, which, again, is fatal. The sight of a crying half-naked woman is exactly the sort of exploitative image that viewers are supposed to feel bad for gawking at. “People love authenticity,” he adds, boldly providing “Funhouse” with its epitaph. Another character, in an earlier scene, is accused of crying “crocodile tears,” but Ula’s sobs are “more genuine,” according to sadistic gamemaster Nero ( Jerome Velinsky).
Still, Ula cries when she shows us her breasts, and her tears are meant to speak not only for her character, but her creators, whose pessimistic view of social media is less than convincing.
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