From Con to Gone: A review of Netflix’s new original show “Squid Game”

I have never been a person to get queasy at the sight of blood or gore, but Netflix’s new original show “Squid Game” had me light-headed and close to fainting.

The show’s plot — reminding me heavily of the book “The Running Man” by Stephen King — focused on Seong Gi-hun, a chauffeur and gambling addict desperate to regain custody of his 10-year-old child. He finds himself on a middle-of-nowhere island after agreeing to participate in a series of six deadly games where the winner gets 45,600,000,000 won, Korean currency equal to 38,100,437.04 U.S. dollars.

Since its initial release on Sept. 17, it has been climbing Netflix’s charts, officially becoming the most-watched show on the platform as of Oct. 9 — and for good reason.

Starting the show, I fully expected it to be fairly straight forward — a show about people dying in children’s games for money. What I didn’t expect was the development of several other plot lines that all converge, but not in the satisfying way you may think.

The only gripe I ever had with the show was how the side plot lines came to an end, especially when those plots seemed to be just as important and prominent as the main one of the games. One such plot line I questioned the existence of was that of Hwang Jun-ho.

When Jun-ho — a police officer who’s in search of his missing brother — sneaks onto the island in search of his brother, I just continued binging the remaining episodes for him to be found or uncover some deep secrets of the games. Sure, his character introduced us to the people behind the scenes of the games, but his purpose was kind of pointless in the end.

Although, I do love how this show thickened to the point it did. The first episode did a good job of laying a strong foundation for the show to build on through the development of one plot line and the characterization of all of the players in the game, but it wasn’t even near as interesting and captivating as the intensity and tension of the last few episodes. 

One of my favorite things about the show was the way they established the characters and their personalities. Everyone that participated in the games was there because they were severely in debt. After the horrors of the first game commence, the majority of the remaining players vote to end the games. But that’s obviously not where the show ends.

Into the second episode, we see 187 players return to the games when given the chance. This does an amazing job at establishing how desperate the people involved in the games are — they’re willing to return to the trauma of the first game to have even a microscopic chance at winning the prize money.

Interestingly enough, many people in South Korea are using the popularity of this show to speak on the major economic distress happening there, where idle rich are continuing to drive up the economic inequality through benefiting off of the lower class. This is well-represented by who the show calls the VIPs — a group of people introduced in the last few episodes.

But the show’s theme of economic disparity wasn’t the show’s only strong point. The CGI techniques and the special effect makeup made everything extremely gut-wrenching to watch, and they accomplished an extremely realistic-looking gore factor. I applaud the show for making it so painful to watch.

Another thing I loved about the show was the use of camera angles and and music selection. The point of view and the nontraditional choice of music for a horror show adds so much to the intensity and calamity of the show. Without it, I would have stopped watching at episode two.

The most notable and identifiable aspect of “Squid Game” is by far its style and aesthetic. I’ve seen memes circulating on my Instagram feed talking about how the premise of the show doesn’t match the style of it at all, but juxtaposition makes everything in any media better. 

The show’s stylistic choices are, I believe, completely intentional and are what makes the show so amazing. Something that you may question the first time seeing it makes a dramatic impact on how the show is designed.

Unless you aren’t good with blood or intense and overwhelming feelings of emotional pain from character death, then I highly recommend this show for your next binge-watch.