I avoided "Squid Game" for a long time, because I felt like I was already very familiar with what it was doing. I've seen "Battle Royale" and "Gantz" and a couple of other ultraviolet Japanese IPs that serve as thinly veiled allegories for the brutal gamification of modern life. I've also seen plenty of the Western equivalents, of course - "Running Man," "The Hunger Games," and a long list of gruesome horror movies. I've enjoyed some of them, but this was never really my genre. I watched some reviews and analysis videos with a lot of spoilers that reinforced that for me, "Squid Game" wasn't going to be anything new.
And then "Squid Game" started winning awards left and right, including a best ensemble award from SAG recently. The cultural impact has continued to be huge, including the case of a Youtuber who paid several million dollars to recreate several of the show's featured death games in real life with real participants for a "parody." The show's influence on Hollywood, especially as an example of western audiences' receptivity to foreign language content, is still being felt. And the first season of "Squid Game" is only nine episodes, so it only took me a few days during the post-Oscars content lull to get through the whole thing.
Frankly, "Squid Game" is exactly what I thought it would be. The characters are tropey and familiar, including the down-on-his luck loser hero Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae), and his more morally compromised old friend Sang-Woo (Park Hae-Soo), who become rivals in the games. You can see all the twists and turns coming from a mile away. However, the execution of the premise and the visual storytelling are excellent. The show is wonderful to look at, with its bright colors and playground aesthetics. All the elements are beautifully designed, from the contestants in their numbered jumpsuits, to the anonymous guards, to the deadly games based on children's activities. The matter-of-fact portrayal of the violence is also crucial in helping "Squid Game" feel much more visceral and dangerous than similar western media.
I also appreciate that "Squid Game" has more social commentary than most death game shows. The "Squid Game" is an allegory for the rat race - a screwed up, often arbitrary system dispensing a twisted version of social equality. Winning is often a matter of luck more than skill, but the people behind the scenes are fanatically devoted to enforcing its rules. The contestants are all there by choice, even given multiple chances to walk away after learning the nature of the contest. We see a few attempts to subvert or cheat the system, but the show is largely committed to actually following the characters as they play the game, and work through the moral choices they have to make in order to survive. Sang-Woo is the most interesting character, because his moral failings start out fairly small - like withholding a key piece of information in an early game - but escalate quickly as the situation grows more dire.
On the other hand, the commentary is fairly shallow. The show's message never goes further than showing us that the game is fundamentally unfair, and arguing that a greedy, cynical view of human nature undermines our own survival. The characters are compelling, but very broad, something that many American viewers don't seem to notice until a couple of English speaking villains show up in the seventh episode. There's nothing wrong with this, but I do think that the show's maturity has been oversold. The show's appeal is in engineering its exciting suspense and horror setpieces, not in being particularly insightful.
It's clear why "Squid Game" became an international hit. There's a universality to the themes and the ideas that is very appealing, and the show offers some horrifying spectacle that you won't see anywhere else. On the other hand, there's a good amount of the story that feels like filler - the whole subplot with the cop (Wi Ha-joon) and the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) doesn't amount to much. I also would have liked "Squid Game" much better if it had stayed a limited series instead of an ongoing one, which its success more or less requires.
Will the creators be able to keep up the quality and fix the show's problems? Honestly, I'm curious. "Squid Game" is such an outlier in so many ways, I'm very interested to see if it'll turn out to be a trailblazer or a fluke.
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