Are you prepared to lose your life when you lose a game? “Squid Game” revolves around the cruelty of abandoning your humanity for a considerable amount of prize money. It is currently 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.3/10 in IMDb. The Korean Drama is so popular it made second on Netflix’s global top 10 charts.
The storyline of “Squid Game” is about a group of people, 456 of them to be exact, who have lost their way in life and who are either in a massive amount of debt or in need of a lot of money. One day, they all recieve a mysterious invitation to a survival simulation game in which the winner will receive a tempting 45.6 billion (around 55 million NZD). All you have to do is to dial the number on the back, and the rest floats from there.
The players are then put to sleep on their way to the location and stripped of all personal belongings until someone has won the game. The whole competition consists of six popular Korean childhood games, but little do the players know they can lose their lives immediately if they lose a game or break any rules.
This type of genre is certainly not the first, but why is it so loved by many? When I watched it – binge-watched actually, I was drawn to the plot twists, the design of the environment, and the reality of losing oneself and human nature to survive. I can still picture myself commenting, “oh, that’s just fu*ked up,” every time something happens.
It’s like a brilliant mix of the Japanese cult hits, Battle Royale (2000) (famously spoilt by the American’s as The Hunger Games) and GANTZ (2011 – film, 2000-2013 – manga series), combined with the unique South Korean flair made famous by Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (Best Picture – 92nd Academy Awards).
The actors and actresses also do a splendid job of playing each character to the fullest. The main characters are played by Lee Jung-Jae (Seong Gi-Hun), Park Hae-Soo (Cho Sang-Woo), Jung Ho-Yeon (Kang Sae-Byeok), Oh Young-Soo (Oh Il-Nam) and Wi Ha-Joon (Hwang Jun-Ho).
The ending felt a bit rushed and less well-done compared with all the other previous episodes; however, it looked like it opened the possibility for a Season 2.
So, how extreme are you willing to go and do to be the only survivor? Would you have dialled the number to participate in a suspicious game?
