(7) SQUID GAME (NETFLIX 2021-PRESENT)
I assume this TV series needs no introduction – the Korean survival drama series (created by Hwang Dong-hyuk) which became the most watched TV series on Netflix.
Interestingly, Wikipedia describes the series as a dystopian survival thriller action television series – I find the description as dystopian particularly interesting. It is not the archetypal futuristic or SF dystopian setting with its setting in contemporary South Korea – arguably the titular game would be open and official rather than secret and criminal to be dystopian in the strict sense. However, the series does succeed in casting contemporary South Korean as dystopian to a degree – that is, as a society in which the game could occur even in the secret and criminal way it does, as well as one with the economic desperation to drive players to the game. More than once as it turns out, even when they know what’s at stake.
You know how it goes – protagonist Seong Gi-hun (or player 456) is down on his luck in virtually every way, such that he finds himself in such economically desperate dire straits that he is happy to accept the offer to play games for monetary reward.
Of course, that offer should have seemed a lot less appealing when it involved being picked up in a proverbial black van by mysterious hooded and masked figures, gassed to unconsciousness, kidnapped to an unknown location, and waking to find onself as well as 455 other people in green tracksuits (in which they were all dressed while unconscious).
Initially, everything about the games and the setting seems childlike and brightly colored – indeed, the games played throughout the series are usually drawn from Korean children’s games. And that’s down to the guards in their pink hooded tracksuits – and faceless masks that only show triangles, squares and circles in the place of faces.
As they say, if it’s too good to be true, it usually is. It would seem odd that simply playing children’s games would pay such substantial monetary rewards – and it is. The very first game – Red Light, Green Light, with its creepy giant doll figure Young-Hee calling out the cues green light to move and red light to freeze – shows that while they are indeed children’s games, they are also death games, played with life itself as the stakes. Not surprisingly, that sees the first game devolve into mass panic – and massacre.
And so it goes from there, with players getting literally eliminated through the series of games until the final showdown game for the massive monetary prize, jackpotting with each player’s life.
There’s much to be traumatized from in this drama, although I still feel that player Kang Sae-byeok (Player 67) was cheated in the fifth penultimate glass-breaking game – and for that matter, that whole game was a massive cheat. No – I will not let it go. Justice for Sae-byeok!
Much of its appeal comes from its distinctive visual design – and that theme music – as well as the arduous physical and psychological twists it put its characters through, with the titular games a combination of trial by ordeal and trial by combat. The grand prize – 45.6 billion Korean won (or 100 million won for each player’s life), with a bonus of PTSD and survivor’s guilt.
The end of 2024 saw its second season released – while not to the standard of the first season and seeming like more a half season cliffhanger for the third season in 2025, it was still interesting and intriguing.
FANTASY & SF
As per that dystopian description used by Wikipedia, the series does invoke dystopian SF, or at least dystopian SF chic.
COMEDY
Arguably there are some comedic elements – albeit not surprisingly dark or black at best.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
