Squid Game Review (TV Series, 2021)
content warning: blood, gore, medical/surgical footage, violence against women, gun violence
Squid Game is a Korean drama/horror series about a deadly game. 456 people living in South Korea are given the opportunity to play games to get out of debt. They each owe millions, if not billions, and are moments from financial ruin. By the end of the first day, half of them are dead and the prize of ₩100,000,000 per losing player is revealed. Anyone who can survive six games in six days gets their share of the total prize pool. Quitting is not an option unless the majority of players choose to end the game.
The first episode of Squid Game hits all the beats you’d expect from a deadly game story and does them well. Our protagonist is player 456. Gi-hun is a loser. He’s a divorced man living off of his elderly mother’s meager earnings, going so far as to steal from her bank account to bet on horse races. He’s desperate enough to try anything to get out of debt. He signs a contract to a loan shark offering his body in exchange for a month’s extension on repayment. This, in turn, puts him in the sights of the mysterious group running the deadly game.
We really don’t get to learn a lot about the how and why of the game. The people running it wear bright pink jumpsuits with black masks on. Only certain workers are allowed the speak. The rest are there to enforce the rules and eliminate the losing players. The players themselves are knocked-out on the commute, Battle Royale-style, and wake up in a bunker with assigned numbers and no idea of what happened.
Squid Game plays like a greatest hits compilation of the deadly game genre and it works. The idea of preying on desperate people to fill the game lines up with the Richard Bachman (Stephen King) deadly games novels of the 80s, specifically Running Man, though the rules they agree to line up well with The Long Walk. The unveiling of the game and introduction of characters is like the Battle Royale film. Each of the games is a deadly version of a schoolyard game with massive body counts ala As the Gods Will by Muneyuki Kaneshiro.
The only thing that doesn’t fall in line with the more common trends in deadly games stories is the lack of an audience. No one knows this game exists outside of the players and the people running it. By the second episode, the players have all voted to end the game and go home. Anyone who tries to get help or share information about the game is thwarted by whoever runs it—phone numbers are changed, no evidence is left behind, and they don’t really understand all that happened anyway. They are given the choice to return, and wouldn’t you know it? Things magically got a whole lot worse for every person who survived the first game. Funny how that happens. It’s like the people running the game have more power than you could ever imagine.
I don’t want to give too much away. Squid Game takes all the bits and pieces you would expect from the deadly game genre and presents them in a surprisingly fresh way. There’s a great balance between drama, horror, and action. The acting and design are good and the sound mixing and editing are incredible. You’re not going to shake this one off as easily as you might expect.
Squid Game is streaming on Netflix.