*** spoilers for the ending towards the end ***
'SQUID Game', Netflix’s latest hit from South Korea – all nine episodes of which were written and directed by Dong Hyuk Hwang – features 456 contestants who have to participate in six childhood games for a cash prize of 45.6 billion won (about US$38 million, or around RM160 million).
However, this time the stakes are life and death, and there can only be one left standing.
It’s quite appropriate that 'Squid Game' has come out so close to the 20th anniversary of the release of ‘Battle Royale’, the Japanese cult classic that spawned this subgenre of ‘death games’. They both don’t skimp out on the violence.
By the end of the first episode, the characters have a harsh realisation of what they are up against. In classic Korean thriller fashion, there is a slow ramp-up of violence over the episode before the blood-soaked climax.
Soon after, they are given a choice to leave or continue, and many choose to continue. But why would someone willingly put themselves in that type of danger, or be willing to kill, even if it’s for an exorbitant amount of money?
It all makes sense because the show makes it extremely clear how miserable these character’s lives are, as exemplified by series protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae).
He is a middle-aged degenerate gambler (to put it lightly) who lives at home with his mother. He’s been laid off from a good job for a long while, while his daughter is about to move to the US with his ex-wife and her well-off stepdad.
Oh, and moneylenders are threatening to remove his eyes and organs if he doesn’t settle his debts by the end of the month.
No wonder he decides to enter into this game of death.
Among the other people taking part include Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo), Gi-Hun’s cousin and the pride of the neighbourhood, who went to a prestigious university but is now wanted for a host of financial crimes; Kang Sae-byeok (HoYeon Jung), who recently fled from North Korea and wants to buy her mother’s freedom and a home for her brother; and Deok-Su (Heo Sung-the), a gangster who’s on the run after picking his boss’s pockets.
The games themselves take place in a mysterious location, as all the players live in a giant gymnasium-type room, where they are kept under watch at all times by the brutal game staff.
It is here that 'Squid Game’s unique visual style comes to the fore, as the players are all dressed in dark green tracksuits, while the staff are dressed in sure to be iconic dark pink outfits with some sort of fencing mask to give them anonymity. The latter has been a big part of Netflix’s marketing strategy.
The contrast of colours, and the often harsh lighting of some of the locations, give the show an otherworldly quality. The artificiality of some game rooms – which are often made of cardboard cutouts – heighten the distance from reality.
In between the gym and the various game rooms are these MC Esher inspired halls and stairways, that are boldly colourful and confusing – for a reason.
The six games are all quite different from each other, offering death and misery in a variety of ways. They are all bloody, though some like the game in episode 6 (Gganbu) are more about the psychological torment. Even something as simple as tug of war is given a brutal redesign.
By a certain point we’ve been rooting for our leads (heroes would not be the right word), and to see them suffer – and yes, die – is its own kind of torture. Sometimes they have to betray one another, and some abandon their humanity while others cling to them. That’s part of the twisted fun of a show like this.
The other fun to be had is the unravelling of the mystery of these games. A cop, Jun-ho (Wi Ha-Joo) is infiltrating the games in search of his missing brother. Along the way, he gathers information and plays a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the enigmatic and violent staff.
Behind it all is the enigmatic Front Man – who wears a different mask from everyone else – and who seems to be pulling the strings in the name of some shadowy organisation.
At a well-paced nine episodes, Squid Game doesn’t overstay its welcome. There’s more than enough violence, character development and mystery throughout. The acting among the leads is really strong and the overall look of the show – especially the action – is really well done.
However, a set of masked characters introduced towards the end of the season bordered on the cartoonish, especially compared with the naturalistic acting of the Korean cast. Some twists are quite predictable if you’re used to this type of story.
There are plenty of surprises, but towards the end of the season, some of the plotting strained credulity.
The next part discusses some of the later reveals.
*** spoilers ahead ***
Following the end of the games, we jump ahead a year. Things don’t seem any better for Gi-Hun as he is burdened by guilt over surviving while so many died. The money is untouched in a bank account.
After receiving a mysterious note, he heads to an office tower where he encounters the elderly Player Number 1, Il-nam, who presumably died at the end of the 4th game. In the biggest twist of the show, Il-nam reveals he is one of the founders of the games.
While this is seemingly clever and comes out of nowhere, it doesn’t entirely make sense. Yes, he wanted to reconnect with this childhood, but he could have died any number of times, from the tug of war to the epilepsy-inducing nighttime fight in the gym. Would the staff let that happen? Would they have intervened?
So many things needed to align for him to get to where he was in the ending, perhaps too many.
Similarly, the reveal that the Front Man is actually Jun-ho’s missing brother is quite shocking, but does it make sense? At the end of Episode 5 we find out that his brother won the Squid Game in 2015 and he has presumably been working for them during the annual event. So Jun-ho only notices his brother missing this time?
Gi-Hun and Sang-woo being the final two, is also quite predictable as they are the characters with the most development. But that didn’t take away from the drama of it, as the former retained his humanity and the latter had dispensed with it relatively early on. A fight to the death between family is always exciting.
It seems like a lot of what transpired towards the end of Episode 9 was about setting up season 2 of the show, in which Gi-hun somehow takes the fight to the people behind the games.
Before meeting Il-nam at the end, he was aimless, but learning just a bit of the truth, and knowing the next iteration of the games will soon begin, pushes him to make the fateful decision. Sure, it would have been nice for him to get on the plane and see his daughter, but Gi-Hun’s sense of justice was too strong.
The plight of the freezing homeless man sealed the deal for him. Despite all he had seen and suffered, Gi-Hun still believed in people’s humanity. When the police car pulled over, he knew that he could not let the people behind the 'Squid Game' get away with their crimes. – The Vibes, September 27, 2021
