Squid Game (Korean: 오징어 게임; RR: Ojing-eo Geim)
Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk
Written by Hwang Dong-hyuk
Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk
Starring Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, O Yeong-su, Wi Ha-joon, Jung Ho-yeon, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, Kim Joo-ryoung
Composer Jung Jae-il
No. of episodes 9
There isn’t a description of Squid Game that wouldn’t cause me to take a hard pass. I absolutely hate reality shows with their mindless, contrived and generally idiotic suspense. And any description of Squid Game is going to sound like a cross between Sword Art Online and a Survivor-type reality show.
However, the title evoked my curiosity, and I usually don’t don’t read the briefs on show. It usually only takes a few minutes to decide if a show is rubbish or not.
Also, it’s Korean. Shows such as Parasite and Kingdom have given me a healthy respect for modern Korean drama. One was a comedy about a family of scam artists. The other was a medieval zombie apocalypse. Both turned out to be gripping dramas with extraordinary acting.
It starts out oddly enough to be engaging. Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is a loser in life, about 30 years old, divorced, trying to maintain contact with his 10 year old daughter, but saddled with immense gambling debts. He creditors are preparing to foreclose on him in the time-honored gangster way. He is desperate. While preparing to catch a subway, a well-dressed businessman type approaches him on the platform. It’s late at night, the platform is mostly deserted. The businessman wants to play a child’s game, ddakji (or ttakji, or pog) where players use folded pieces of paper to flip one another’s pieces. He offers to play for money, and Jung-jae demurs, explaining he is broke. The businessman then offers an alternative; he plays for money, and Jung-jae plays for getting slapped. He gets slapped a fair number of times before finally winning a round, and get 10,0000 won (about $80) for his efforts. He also gets a business card, one side with a triangle, a square, and a circle, and on the back, a phone number. The mysterious businessman tells him he can play games for far higher stakes and need only call this number. How high stakes? Billions of won, more than enough to satisfy his gambling debts and get his life back on track.
He calls, of course, because the alternative is getting kicked to death by Korean gangsters, which probably wouldn’t get good ratings.
The games are in a vast and ridiculously overengineered and designed place. The players compete in children’s games. The first game is “Red Light Green Light” (Statues, here) in which one player turns back on all the others, who can advance while the back is turned. They must freeze immediately in position when the “it” player turns to face them. In this instance, it’s a large playing area, the “it” player is a huge, macabre girl doll, and if you fail to freeze or lose your balance, armed guards shoot you. The survivors go on to the next round, the losers lose various organs and get cremated.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Yes, it sounds stupid as hell, an amped-up version of reality shows. They come with ridiculous game twists and achingly stupid and contrived suspense. Only morons watch those shows.
But by the time you realize that this is the nature of the show, you’re already hooked. The characters are fully developed, and even though some are tropes (the brutal thug, the well-meaning crazy whore, the kindly anile old gent, etc) they are all given enough depth and unique characteristics that they aren’t cardboard cutouts, but real people like the ones you encounter in daily life. The interactions amongst the dwindling band of people take many turns, some inevitable, some unexpected. Only one player will survive. Literally.
The sets are both ridiculous and jaw dropping. Salvador Dali and MC Escher took turns, I suspect.
The series is mesmerising. “Did I say even or odd?” will haunt me. This should be a very silly and bloody cross between Sword Art Online and reality “off-the-island” TV, but it’s not. It’s creeping, suspenseful, horrifying drama with a strong moral base and finely tuned sense of social outrage. It is, frankly, an amazing show.
The moral basis behind what seems an exercise in nihilistic cruelty is an examination of the role of capitalism. Capitalism is a huge problem in Korea, where plutocrats have created a vast underclass where there should be comfortable living. Just as is happening in the US. All the players in the game, in one way or another, either though personal flaws or bad luck, are victims of capitalism. All are people unable to win in a system designed to crush 99.99% of the population. The games are just a continuation of that.
There are a group of billionaires in masks watching the games. Most are, by their voices, American, but even in the subtitled, non-dubbed version, they are parodies of the Ugly American accent. That’s because they are parodies of the Ugly American. Capitalism is seen as a cruel disease in South Korea, and America is seen as the source. So the masked men in the spectator pavilion are cruel, haughty, and contemptuous of poor people.
I note that most people who didn’t like the show watched the dubbed version. I recommend the subtitled version because it permits you to hear the original voices of the actors, and the acting in this—trust me on this—is tremendous.
It won’t be for everyone. It is violent, intense, and emotionally disturbing.
It is also brilliant.