Netflix’s Most Trending Show: Squid Game

On September 17, 2021, Netflix’s Original K-drama, Squid Game, was released. The show quickly rose to number one on Netflix’s top charts and holds a high rating of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Squid Game is one season long with nine episodes. Each episode is roughly an hour-long, so the whole show’s runtime is about eight hours long. 

Squid Game is a suspense-filled survival show in which 456 people compete in childish games with a dark twist. Each of the 456 competitors come from different paths but they are all struggling financially; this makes them the perfect candidates for a secret competition where they play games from childhood for a $38 million prize. 

While each of the games have a huge impact on the characters and their future choices, the two games that I found to be catalysts were the game of tug of war and marbles. Tug of war was the first game where the winning players were directly at fault for the losers’ deaths, and in the lethal game of marbles, allies were forced to compete against each other.

When it comes to gore and horror, Squid Game never shies away. First and foremost, the murders take place in bright, pastel colored settings, for the most part. The murders are also very blunt and impersonal, as they are committed by fully concealed figures, whom we only learn about through Hwang Jun-ho, a detective who snuck into the games and uncovered them.

The opening scene showed a flashback of our main character, Gi-Hun, as he won and explained the Squid Game. This scene made the ending infinitely more symbolic because just like in the very first scene, Gi-hun won the squid game against his childhood friend and walked away with the prize money.

Throughout the whole show, in between games, there is tons of character interaction that determine allies, enemies, and everything in between. Relationships would be built like the friendship between Il-nam and Gi-hun, or broken like Deok-su’s betrayal of Mi-nyeo. It’s all natural selection in a way, people either adapt and survive like Sang-woo, who was willing to do anything to stay alive, or fail to adapt and die like Kim Yun-tae, who committed suicide after winning against his wife in the marbles game.

Like most Netflix shows, Squid Game ended its first season with a massive cliffhanger. At the end of the show, we find a shocking twist: Il-nam, who was supposedly dead, is actually alive and the mastermind behind the entire competition.

The ending of the show is open-ended, allowing the possibility for the release of another season. This show was extraordinarily gripping and had me on the edge of my seat all the way to the end. It is the perfect show for October, especially with Halloween coming up. It is a suspenseful, gore-filled show that, no matter how disturbing, you just can’t look away.