This is like one of those, “I did it so you don’t have to” articles, except it’s more like, “I did it and I really think you should too." What did I do? I watched Squid Game — the new Netflix limited series comprised of nine 60-minute episodes. I got through the entire thing in about 20 hours, which means a normal person could probably do it in about four days. I am confident that you will find it worth your time.
Squid Game is based in South Korea and shot entirely in Korean. I, like many others, was hesitant to commit to relying on closed captions as a young and stupid consumer of media. However, I walked into Parasite back in 2019 with no knowledge of the film or its contents, and I walked out ready to take on any subtitles the world could throw at me. Thank goodness I had that practice — I stand firmly of the opinion that the best way to consume Squid Game is by watching it in the language it was intended. My Netflix was preset to dub in English, but I was bothered by the fact that the dubbing didn’t match the subtitles, and decided to commit to the latter. My one complaint about this decision was that every time I looked down at my phone for longer than two seconds, I lost track of whatever conversation was happening.
Our protagonist is Seong Gi-hun, a divorced father who has very clearly gambled his entire life away and is desperate for any way in which he can regain some semblance of self-control. He needs money to pay back his debts to provide for his daughter and aging mother. He is approached by a strange man on the subway, who offers him an opportunity to make money in exchange for playing simple games against others. After some back and forth, Seong Gi-hun decides to go after the unspecified prize money.
He winds up in a giant facility on a deserted island with over 450 other participants — one of which he recognizes as a childhood friend, Cho Sang-woo. The two join together in hopes of advancing through what they come to learn will be six rounds of games. The catch, as everyone soon discovers, is that “elimination” from the game entails a gruesome and violent death. Nobody except the winner will escape the island alive.
What follows is an almost unprecedented amount of shooting deaths on TV, as participants are murdered execution-style by “workers” who help the “leader” to run the games smoothly. All of the workers are masked and ranked by a hierarchy comprised of shapes, and their red jumpsuits are just as unnerving as they are anonymous. Who started this game? Why do these people help that person without question? What exactly is anyone even playing for? Seong Gi-hun contemplates all of this as he fights for his life day after day.
Squid Game co-stars HoYeon Jung as Kang Sae-Byeok, an aloof girl who holds her own during the games and is one of the most beautiful women I have ever laid eyes on; Oh Young-soo as Oh Il-nam, an adorable old man who Gi-Hun takes under his wing; Anupam Tripathi as Abdul Ali, a fan-favorite competitor, and my personal favorite; and Kim Joo-ryung as Han Mi-nyeo, an absolutely batshit woman whose only mission on the island seems to be driving everyone else to the brink of insanity. A true girl boss — I love her.
Squid Game does a lot of things well and doesn’t do a whole lot else. The acting is so good that I could sense the passion in the characters without even actually understanding the words they were speaking. The character and plot development was, with very few exceptions, very good, and consistently so. The twists and turns were exciting and, at least to me, unpredictable until literal seconds before big reveals. What this show makes you do is think about who the real villains are, and the answers are never as clear as they should be, which I loved.
This is one of those shows that you have to put down everything and pay attention to enjoy. As an ADHD sufferer, this is not something I am often willing to do — especially when Netflix offers so much mindless garbage as an alternative. However, Squid Game is most definitely worth the time of anyone even slightly interested in the concept. It is also a perfect show for viewers who are still intimidated by having to rely on subtitles, which will open it up to a much wider audience. Everyone everywhere is reporting that Squid Game is on track to be Netflix’s most popular original series yet, and I don’t doubt that. I am certainly not rooting against it.
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