In theaters no more than 30 minutes from you, a social experiment is being conducted: Will hard-working Americans really hand over cash just to watch Naomi Watts get tortured?

“Funny Games,” the American remake of an Austrian film from the late ‘90s, poses this question. The film, about a wealthy family of three on vacation who are tortured physically and mentally by preppy boys dressed in white, grossed $568,064 in the U.S. in ticket sales, according to Movieweb.com. So, at least a few people went to watch the gratuitous gore, but the question is: WHY!? What pulls the seemingly normal person to the promise of pain?

Perhaps the experts have an answer. In his review of the movie, Jim Emerson, Roger Ebert’s editor, compared the audience to lab rats.

“You (the lab rat) are placed in a Skinner box (the movie theater) and subjected to random negative violence (filmed violence as a substitute for painful electrical jolts),” Emerson writes on Rogerebert.com.

Well, this lab rat hasn’t fallen for the trap, but curiosity is getting the better of him. Fueled by comments like that of the Washington Post’s John Anderson, calling the original “a critique of American style media violence,” it makes me wonder if I could withstand the shock to the system. Maybe I could find deeper meaning in violence.

Then I realize the real problem with “Funny Games.” It’s a remake; it has no original thought, and worst of all, it’s filmed in a shot-for-shot copycat format. The only change is the lack of subtitles, and eliminating reading might have done away with the most intellectual part of this movie.

On a larger scale, it is more important to wonder why such a film needs to be remade. The reason certainly is not because foreign films do poorly with American audiences. Successes such as “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Orphanage,” and an Oscar win for actress Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose,” prove Americans like some foreign influence.

However, for as much as foreign films are liked in the States, violent films such as “Hostel” and the “Saw” prove people enjoy blood and guts, too.

Was “Funny Games” simply rehashed to trick the gore fan back into the theater? Are fans of blood being unjustly nickled and dimed to a less gruesome death? No; sadly, the answer is much more mundane than all that.

While the motivation in making a violent movie will always be partly to make money off the gore crowd and shock seekers (they do have cash to spend after all), “Funny Games” was remade due to a lack of originality. The film, which originally lampoons violent culture with an excess of violence, may have a point; but there is no reason to restate that point. The only thing the American version of “Funny Games” can accomplish is an exercise in self-indulgence.

The real game with this movie is seeing how many “rats” will actively participate in this maze devoid of intellect. If you want to see a film ridiculing violence, go see “Shoot ‘Em Up,” “Bowling for Columbine” or even “Kill Bill” (both volumes). But if you want to test the shock value of a broken record – well, it’s a free country.