Continuing on my theme of being the last person in the world to watch something trendy, this week I binged Netflix’s Squid Game. If you, like me, are the last person to see it, I’ll summarize it as a group of contestants play a series of deadly games in pursuit of a giant cash prize. The series follows Seong Gi-hun, a down-and-out gambler pursued by ruthless loan sharks, who seeks to get out of debt and maintain custody of his daughter. One day, he meets a well-dressed man who carries a briefcase full of money. The man invites him to play a simple game, promising the money if Seong wins. When Seong loses and admits he doesn’t have the money to cover his wager, the man suggests Seong can pay with his body, slapping him in the face. Seong catches on and they continue - lose, slap, lose, slap - until finally Seong wins. When the man hands him his small cash prize, he invites Seong to play a different game where there is real money to be won. It turns out that Seong is one of 456 players to accept this invitation, and soon he is ferried (literally) off to an unknown island that houses a Bond-villain type of lair. The 456 players all dorm together and are dressed in identical green tracksuits. The only thing that differentiates them is the player number printed on their tracksuit.
Seong Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jam
Perhaps the first hint that something is terribly wrong is the appearance of the facility’s staff, who all wear pink jump suits with black fencing masks obscuring their faces. Each mask has a symbol - a square or circle - that looks like something printed on a Playstation controller.
The facility looks like something from a video game, and there’s a playful camaraderie as the 456 players head off to their first content, the children’s game Red Light, Green Light. If the pink faceless jumpsuits didn’t tip them off that something was wrong, then the guns that open fire on all the contestants that fail to freeze for Red Light certainly does. The first game is panicked blood bath, killing off half of the players. There are several more games to come.
What follows is a Breaking Bad-like spiral for the remaining players. People quickly realize that the cash pot increases by a million for each player’s death, and it doesn’t matter if that death occurs in game or in the darkness of their dormitory’s night.
People who are already ruthless continue to be ruthless, but people who were kind find themselves in a dog-eat-dog world where their morals are gradually compromised as they do what it takes to survive. Clans form, Survivor-style, and Seong’s clan is composed mostly of the good guys. To the writer’s credit, the episodes spend time with each of the characters, and when the inventible betrayals occur, the viewer feels them. One of the games near the end is especially brutal when it pits allies against each other, and some of the good guys do awful things to be the one left still breathing.
The facility’s overseer, the Frontman, has an interesting line mid-season where he comments that the game is an equalizer. Every person comes from different disadvantaged backgrounds, he says, but in the game they are identical and for once in their lives have an equal chance at the money. Note his assessment isn't quite true - some of the games rely on physical strength and the physically stronger are at an advantage in these - but it is a theme for the show. The series is about inequality and desperation, and the choices you make when you’re desperate.
The Frontman. If your host is dressed like this, this also is not a good sign.
If the idea of contestants playing to the death to win a fabulous cash prize sounds familiar, there’s a long history of this in cinema.
The Hunger Games is the most recent similar story about a contest to the death, although its contestants were picked by lottery.
1987’s The Running Man even had a game show host for its lethal contest
1985’s Gymkata had a mountain obstacle course of doom
In a way, the set up reminds me of a murderous version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. After each mishap, pink jumpsuit guys come out like Oompa Loompas to clean up the mess, but all of the players continue on nonetheless for the promise of the final prize.
It also reminds me of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (which itself was a repurposing of the original gameshow Takeshi’s Castle). Granted, people weren’t playing to death in it, but I can imagine that falling face-first into a giant roller would leave a mark.
The other obvious comparison is to 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut (in particular in Squid Game’s third act when wealthy, golden-masked benefactors show up to watch the games).
Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut.
The Netflix version of Squid Game that I watched was dubbed, but I think there’s also an option to watch in the original language with subtitles. I think I would prefer subtitles, to hear the actors’ performance.
What to make of Squid Game? The fact that I’m writing a blog post means it succeeded in getting me to think about it after it concluded. I enjoyed the later parts of the series more than the earlier, because they became very character-focused. Even the story’s hero didn’t always act very heroic. There was a message that, even if you think you’re the good guy, you may be one dire situation away from tabling your morals and principles.
The story’s wrap up concludes with a final game and a winner, and is both expected and satisfying. The plot that follows, however, flops flat and feels like it missed on an opportunity to show exactly what the money did for the winner. There’s a standard writer’s element for character-building called “the lie that the protagonist believes”, and often it is what the protagonist seeks through much of the plot. The wrap-up flirted with the idea of having the money but not wanting it anymore, but then pivoted for a big character twist right at the end. I won’t spoil it, but it seemed tacked on, and didn’t quite work out as a twist for me.
Do I recommend Squid Game? Yes. Keep in mind it’s very violent - hundreds of people are executed or murdered and there are side plots involving organ harvesting that are gory, so be aware of what you’re signing up for when you watch it. But, the series will leave you thinking a bit about its themes, and the character conflict and macabre curiosity for what the next game is will keep you hooked.