The knife in the boat

Having the audience notice the knife fall into the boat at the very beginning of the film was such a brilliant touch!

I think that the whole point of that was to trick the audience to fall for old horror cliches: "the final surviving female kills the villains." I think Haneke wanted us to predict that the film would end in some chase scene to the boat, Anna would find the knife, and stab Paul and Peter. Since they were away from the remote, they wouldn't have been able to undo it.

Placing that false-clue so early on in the movie, only to have it be disregarded as completely unimportant by the end, was brilliant. This movie is unpredictable to the very end. I think that's why so many people didn't like it; they weren't able to stroke their egos with knowing how it was going to end.

Now all I need is a crucifix and a vagina!