Anyone familiar with South Korean cinema will know that there’s always more than meets the eye. When Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy left audiences wowed, and perhaps a little nauseous, in 2003, South Korean films were not yet notorious on the world stage. They were still finding their feet after changes in strict censorship and hampering film regulations.
Flash forward to 2020, and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite wins the Best Picture Oscar. In-between, films like Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan, Joon-ho’s The Host, and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning have firmly established the country’s output as cinema that packs not only a punch, but razor-sharp social commentary to boot.
It’s no surprise then that when the trailer for Netflix’s original drama Squid Game arrived earlier this year, people suspected it would be far more than a pale imitation of Battle Royale, The Hunger Games or Black Mirror.
And it is certainly that. When the series starts, we meet Seong Gi?hun, a down-on-his-luck bum on the run from local gangsters and stealing money from his long-suffering mother. He heads to the betting shop to try and raise funds to take his daughter out for her birthday, and anything he’s able to put in his pocket soon goes straight back out again.
So when a stranger approached Gi-hun and asks him to play a simple game marbled with risk of reward but also violence, he accepts. This game however is only the precursor to a larger, far more violent tournament where Gi-hun will be one of 456 contestants playing a raft of childhood games to compete for a pot of almost 46 billion South Korean Won (some 28.5 million pounds).
One of the many things that sets Squid Game apart is that it gets its morbid fascination out of the way quickly, so it can progress onto far more complex storylines, twists, and even elicitations from the viewer.
After we’re introduced to the rag-tag bunch playing, as well as their increasingly desperate reasons for being there, we watch as they begin a queasily oversized version of Red Light, Green Light (or What’s the time Mr. Wolf?). It’s all (literally) fun and games, until the first contestant caught out is shot dead by a sniper rifle. The incoming onslaught of violence is a lot for the first episode of any series, but it’s almost as though Squid Game is getting the blood spatter and twitching bodies out of the way early so it can then really start to dig its claws into you.
You might ask if Squid Game works to the Battle Royale template, how engaged are you going to be by say episode six of nine. But you needn’t worry. Episode two comes with its own unexpected but ingenious development, and you have no choice but to dispel your notions of what you’ve sat down to watch. In doing so, you begin to realise that much like the contestants struggling to remember the childhood games they’re confronted with, you’re not entirely aware of the rules here. And this empathy doesn’t stop here either, as the series does an excellent job of asking you what you’d do in a number of impossibly torturous situations.
At its heart, Squid Game is a brilliant and powerful dive into societal divide. Its emotional moments toe a very fine line, but never feel overly sentimental or burdensome. In fact, whenever you find yourself drunk on emotion or even humour (yes there are laughs and a lot of them), there’s a nice sharpener of cynicism to bring you round.
It’s utterly compelling, and yet another example of the exceptionally original storytelling coming out of South Korea. Abandon your preconceptions at the door, or have them stripped from you. Then sit back and enjoy. After all, it’s only a game.
‘Squid Game’ Season 1 is available now on Netflix UK and in other territories.
