Squid Game - Netflix's Viral Sensation Turns Violence into Voyeurism

Who would have ever thought that a South Korean drama would top the Global Netflix Chart? Definitely not me!

Squid Game is currently on everyone’s mouth and the internet is invaded by memes with men in pink jumpsuits wearing ‘Playstation buttons’ masks and people carving random honeycomb figures. If this doesn’t make any sense to you, please let me explain.

It’s no surprise that South Korea is slowly taking over the western entertainment market. The so-called ‘hallyu wave', AKA the cultural exportation of Korean products to the West, has seen a rapid increase in the past few years. The Kpop group BTS has topped the US and global music charts multiple times, and who can forget the historic victory of the film Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho as Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Award.

But what is Squid Game? And more importantly, does it deserve the hype it's receiving?

Casting & Characters

Squid Game is a survival action television series directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk that premiered on Netflix mid September 2021. The cast includes South Korean household names of commercial and art-house films like Lee Jung-jae (better known for the stellar noir New World and the erotic thriller The Housemaid) and O Yeong-su who starred in Kim Ki-duk’s masterpiece Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring.

There’s also a special cameo of Gong Yoo, known to the western audience for being handsome (just kidding!) and for his touching performance in the zombie action film Train to Busan.

The Plot

The story centres around Seong Gi-hun, a divorced middle aged man full of debts who decides to join a mysterious contest where participants have to win 6 games in a row for the chance to win a cash prize of ₩ 45.6 billion (around $38 ml). He is joined in this quest by 455 other contestants who will stop in front of nothing to get their cut.

The catch? If you lose one of the games you die. Pretty simple, right?

Why it works

What Squid Game does exceptionally well is giving an interesting new twist to the mortal contest genre. The past two decades have seen dozens of products based on games where participants either win or die. Some of the most popular include Battle Royal, The Hunger Games and Netflix’s Alice in Borderland. But what these three products have in common is that the main protagonists are all forced to join the competition by a higher power - whether it’s a repressive government or a secret organisation.

In Squid Game, all participants agree to take part in the games not once, but twice! Even after knowing the consequences of the game, greed or desperation have the upper hand and contestants start dying like flies.. It’s not just crude violence in its execution, but in the moral dilemmas it presents to characters and viewers.

The idea of using children's games is also an interesting twist - although not completely original, as it was already present in the Japanese manga As the Gods Will by Muneyuki Kaneshire and Akeji Fujimura. If you are well versed in Japanese cinematography, you might remember enfant terrible Takashi Miike’s film adaptation.

The games are mostly traditional to South Korean culture, and although some are present in other parts of the world (e.g. Red Light, Green Light), others like the honeycomb figure carving and the ‘Squid Game’ are unique and extremely fascinating to watch.

The series has some truly exceptional direction, acting and music and is able to maintain a high level of tension throughout all 9 episodes, with some climaxes of exploding violence that make the lines between victim and perpetrator extremely blurred and turn the viewer into an unknowing voyeur. As a viewer, you are repulsed by the games, but at the same time, just like the VIPs, you just can’t stop watching…

The full package would not be complete without a sharp criticism of South Korea’s class divide. This theme is widely explored in modern South Korean cinematography, like the aforementioned Parasite and Train to Busan, but also some cult oldies like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance by Park Chan-wook and Peppermint Candy by Lee Chang-dong, who recently rose to international fame with the stunning thriller Burning.

Once again, Seoul is depicted as a merciless city where poor people give away everything, including the right to their own bodies to pay their debts, and foreigners are abused by their greedy employers and victims of constant hate and suspicion. The protagonists are depicted like desperate human beings whose only chance to survive is to kill each other and obtain a sum of money that could be life changing.

Underwhelming Payoff

Obviously, a big part of the drama is centred around the identity of the secret organisation that runs the game, on why they were created and on the secret identity of the so-called ‘Frontman'.

Personally, the big reveal did not give me the payoff I was expecting. It brings me no joy to say that I had seen the big final reveal coming, but only because I have seen one too many murder mysteries and off screens deaths are always very suspicious to me. I wasn’t particularly bothered by it, although the reasoning behind the creation of the game was unconvincing at best.

In general, there are a lot of unanswered questions which makes me suspect they are holding on to some crucial info for a potential second season. This is a recurring issue I have with Korean dramas that see Netflix as the original network and not just the distributor. Close to 99% of South Korean dramas tend to be self-contained stories which avoids the common issue of repetition and stretching out a series until it remains popular that is very common in western series.

Approaching Korean Dramas for the first time

If you have never seen a Korean drama or film before, you might be caught by surprise by the acting; at times it can seem very exaggerated in the tones and the lines of dialogue are often delivered with the whole body, not just the voice . This is a distinctive trait of South Korean productions where melodrama plays a central role in the storytelling. If this is not something you can get behind, I doubt you will be able to fully enjoy Squid Game, or any South Korean film/series.

The absence of dubbing -as of right now- could also rub some people the wrong way, as subs are often seen as ‘inaccessible’ or ‘hard to follow’, but as Bong Joon-ho once said: ‘Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.’

In short, Squid Game is an enjoyable series, with twists and turns that will make you binge watch all nine episodes and force you to have some gut-wrenching reflections on humans and violence that will make you question the nature of humanity more than once. Oh, It’s also become a meme favourite by the online community, and who am I to go against the internet?

Rating: 8/10

Did you enjoy Squid Game? What was your favourite game? Mine has to be the Glass Bridge..absolutely terrifying!

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