(TV SERIES) Squid Game - One Heck of a Shockingly Violent Series

Yesterday there was a new South Korean series released on Netflix together with a third season of another series. I was actually in the middle of a different series, but after reading a very brief description of this one, I decided to give it a try. And now I have completed it, I could not wait to write about it. OK, let's get it on.

Brief Story Line

Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae - Chief of Staff TV series, Deliver Us from Evil etc) was a debt-ridden compulsive gambler who worked as chauffeur and living off his mother's money. When he was offered to play a set of  survival game with large cash prize, Gi-hun was interested and decided to do it. Inside the mysterious game location, he was given the number 456 and met with hundreds of other participants including his childhood friend Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo - Prison Playbook TV series, Time to Hunt etc).

Gi-hun and Sang-woo later got to know with other players like the old man with a tumor who had the number 001 (Oh Young-soo), a North Korean woman with number 067 (Jung Ho-yeon), a gangster named Jang Deok-su (Heo Sung-tae - The 12th Suspect etc), Ali a Pakistani worker (Anupam Tripathi), a single mother named Han Mi-nyeo (Kim Joo-ryung - Sleepless Night etc) and few others. As they started to play their first seemingly simple children's game, little did they realize that it had a deadly twist. 

In addition to those players, there were also people hidden in masks guarding the game location who were led by mysterious person called Front Man. Meanwhile a young police detective named Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon - Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum etc) who got hold of information about this game, was trying to investigate it. So what would happen to Gi-hun and the others? And what was the background of this mysterious game? Find them all in this shockingly violent series.

End of Brief Story Line

I said above that I was intrigued by the short synopsis which reminded me of other movies with similar premise of getting into mysterious deadly games for the huge prize money. As I watched the first episode that introduced us with the lead character of Gi-hun, I felt it focused heavily on the reasons for him to join the game which to me was OK, but seemed a bit too long. However, as soon as the first game started, my goodness it suddenly turned into something truly shocking and made me changed my whole perspective of this series.

While I continue watching, I thought that it was at its best when they were playing the games. During the time between those games, it was showing the interaction between the players which was quite interesting. It also made us get to know a little bit better with some of the players and their motivation to play the game. There were side stories involving the guards as well. Nevertheless, even if they gave us better context on the characters, I personally prefer it focused more on the intensity of the games and the suspense is consistent. Btw, most of them are popular Korean children's games, though few of them were universally known. 

The games being played were mostly thrilling and suspenseful and there was one that had me gasped few times which made my wife turned her head around to see me. The series had 9 episodes overall and to me the best one was definitely the 6th episode. It was such an emotional experience watching that episode. I had a mixed feeling about the finale as it felt a bit anticlimactic on the last game but it did have a shocking revelations plus an ending that seemed like hinting a second season. By the time I wrote this post, I had not find out if there will be a second season.

The cast of the series generally did their best in here with some strong performances from Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo and Jung Ho-yeon. Oh I also admired Heo Sung-tae who successfully portrayed this irritating obnoxious gangster that everybody loathed. Other than those named I mentioned earlier, there were also special guest appearances of well known movie stars. Fans of South Korean movies/series would surely know as even I who had not seen that many films/series could recognize them. As a series with the focus of deadly games played by people motivated by money, this one I think successfully showed that part. The writers tried to give us a twist which did not surprise me as I already had a feeling of it, but there was another twist towards the end that I did not see coming. 

Overall I liked the intensity of the games, the participants interactions & their background and obviously how they did their best to win the games. But I did not really like the side story of 7th episode, plus I think there was a miscalculation in this episode (you would understand if you have watched it). And I would have really loved it if the intensity could be felt throughout the whole season. I also felt there was a bit of similarity with Kaiji trilogy of movies based on popular Manga series, which in turn was made into Chinese version titled Animal World. So if you like this sort of series with tons of scenes where you would be shocked and probably shake your heads in disbelief at the craziness people would do for money, then you would love this one. However you need to get yourself ready with the sight of disturbing violence.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars