Squid Game follows Seong Gi-Hun (Greg Chun) who is down on his luck and has an absorbent amount of debt from loan sharks.
Following a game with a mysterious well-dressed man, who gives him ₩100,000 for winning a children’s game and a business card inviting him to play more games, Gi-Hun accepts and is kidnapped to a mysterious location with 455 other players. There they are forced to play children’s games with deadly consequences for losing.
The newest Korean Netflix TV show directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk. Many of Netflix’s great international movies like The Platform or shows like Alice in Borderland usually revolves around dark themes and turning harmless games into deadly scenarios. Netflix has been on a hot streak recently when it has come to these types of shows. Squid Game has many similar concepts to Alice in Borderland, which will appeal to fans of that show.
The thematic elements of Squid Game sets it apart from many other shows and movies.
The show doesn’t spend a lot of time on the games, but instead on character moments and small insights to each character. The show makes you question the morality of the situation, as the players of the game are people who are either down on their luck, cheated and broke the rules of the system by committing fraud or not paying rent or taxes, as well as people who had bad circumstances in life.
The show’s acting is extremely well done. Chun does an excellent job portraying a man who has lost everything in his life, including his wife and daughter. The show sets up Gi-Hun for over 30 minutes before he gets introduced to the games, allowing the viewers to get to know his character and empathize with his struggles. Park Hae-Soo does an incredible job portraying a sneaky, cunning character with his portrayal of Cho Sang-Woo.
The “games” in Squid Game are all very well done. The red light, green light game has recently exploded on TikTok, becoming a big meme for good reason.
The show has many memorable moments and most of them come from the games themselves. One moment that will stand out for a lot of people is the game of marbles. It gets very emotional as the main cast has to fight against each other for survival. Each game is simple but is very brutal in nature in each episode. We get to see tug of war, honeycombs, marbles, glass stepping stones and the infamous squid game itself.
Squid Game is an extremely complex Netflix show that is very bingeable in nature. There are so many themes and narratives throughout the show that will make viewers question morality regarding if the players in the game deserve to be in this predicament as some of them are criminals and scam artists. Squid Game is an incredible ride and when said ride ends, you wish you could ride it again.
Rating: 4/5
