Squid Game: South Korea’s Smash-Hit Thriller Is The Best Thing You Can Stream Right Now

Image sourced from cnet.com

By Pablo Castillo Lacalle

Hwang Dong-hyuk’s series Squid Game might be the most pleasantly surprising new success
story in entertainment at the moment. And what a success it is - having become Netflix’s most
streamed show in history, the macabre Korean horror show has its eyes firmly set on following in
the footsteps of Bong Joon-Ho’s world-conquering Parasite, this time on the small screen. It’s
never been a better time for foreign media (I implore each and every person who watches it not
to do so with the atrociously hammy English dub) and Squid Game is another example of how
the West should take note and be on its toes, lest it be thoroughly trounced by Eastern creators.

Squid Game stars Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun, an impoverished man down on his luck,
steeped in debt to cut-throat moneylenders and estranged from his daughter. What ostensibly
begins as a tense but relatively by-the-numbers story rife with poor financial decisions and
cringe-inducing mishaps, soon spirals into a shockingly demented turn of events, wherein
hundreds of desperate strangers looking to claw their way out of a debt-ridden hell are plunged
into a purgatory wherein a mysterious cabal of elites have them take part in insanely gruesome
twists on classic children’s games, for a grand prize of billions.

On the surface it seems like a fairly played out concept: the ‘enter a sadistic game with your life
on the line’ idea has been done to death, from the Saw franchise to The Hunger Games. But
where Squid Game shines is in a genuinely novel and astute take on its core idea. For one, with
its main cast made up of the exploited and abused diaspora of Korean society, the show has
something profound to say about the dehumanising effects of poverty. As the tensions and
ambitions of the game’s players escalate, it also provides a genuinely engaging debate about whether truly good men can exist in barbarous conditions, or if all humans are inevitably destined into validating the Hobbesian view of our species as inherently self-centred animals. There’s also a
fantastic twist on the usual formula, with the participants of the game never obligated to actually
play by force, making the audience consider the brutality of an existence so dismal that gambling
for your life would be seen as a better alternative.

As themes go it’s certainly a step up from the vile murder-porn of the Saw franchise (whose
greatest philosophical achievement was pointing out that - shocker - you’d be pretty grateful to be
alive after being tortured half to death), which, combined with some specific geographical and
cultural context to South Korea itself, keeps the show and its characters from never seeming like
they’re aping Western counterparts (one character’s main conflict for example, Sae-Byeok,
played by HoYeon Jung, stems from the burdens levied on top of her for being a North Korean
defector). Added to all of this is excellent visuals and costume design, from the eery symbol-
masks and red jumpsuits worn by the deadly game’s enforcers, to the sickeningly cheery pastel-
coloured hallways of the facility our characters find themselves in.

The games themselves, of course, are key to the show working as well as it does. With monstrous
twists on classic games for little children (with the end result for any losers being instant death),
there’s something stomach-churningly disturbing in seeing pastimes so associated with harmless
innocence perverted into scenes of butchery that, many times, are genuinely hard to watch. The
palpable fear and visceral carnage of the games makes for a shockingly effective juxtaposition
with the morbidly ridiculous sight of grown men and women taking part in them. As an added
bonus, with many of the games being exclusive to Korea and other Asian countries (especially
the eponymous 'Squid Game'), Western viewers unfamiliar with them will always be kept intrigued
and interested by the variety on offer.

But senseless massacres and buckets of blood can be found aplenty in other lesser shows, and
Squid Game smartly avoids indulging in its slaughter by placing much of the focus of its lens on
human relationships. Aside from the obligatory antagonist who everyone can’t wait to meet their grisly end (Heo Sung-tae in a wonderfully hissable turn as brutish thug Deok-su), there’s a startling
amount of nuance in the decisions the cast makes, with even the most appalling betrayals made
understandable (though never justified) once we are given more insight into backstories,
motivations, or simply when taking into the account how dire the situation really is. The
performances are top-notch across the board (I’d especially like to single out the New Delhi born
Anupam Tripathi for a heartbreakingly emotive performance as Pakistani immigrant Abdul Ali)
and help sell the traumatic consequences of the game.

Unfortunately, it’s not all perfect: one scene in particular is shot in a frustratingly chaotic fashion,
with lights flickering on and off so that it is extremely difficult to follow the action in a satisfying
way, and the show does sometimes linger too long to establish concepts we were already aware
of. The arrival of the wealthy V.I.P’s to the game’s finale also comes dangerously close to
pushing the series into the realm of the derivative, with said elites being disappointingly one-
dimensional, stereotypical shadowy-benefactors who spout uninteresting and often times
painfully cliché lines of dialogue. That and the final twist can be considered as somewhat
divisive, as (in my opinion at least) it does retroactively sour my favourite tragic moment and
character farewell in the entire series.
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All said and done however, Squid Game stands out from the pack by never being afraid of
pushing its blood-stained envelope as far as it will go. It is a series that is refreshingly not averse
to really testing the limits of its audience, all complimented by a unique aesthetic and gimmick
that combines surprisingly well with tightly written and relevant criticisms of inequality and
selfishness that never feel like they’re being laid on too thick: viewers can enjoy the thrills of the
game and the overall message behind it in equal measure. Squid Game is a masterfully realised
triumph for South Korean media, which hopefully will lead more people on to discover the wealth
of phenomenal cinema and television it has to offer.