Squid Game Review: Your New Bingeworthy Obsession

Squid Game: the show everyone’s talking about right now and for good reason! Netflix’s latest hit show that has been taking over social media. The series is a South Korean thriller drama with high intensity, gripping twists, and a brilliant cast that you won’t want to miss. 

To begin, Squid Game follows a group of people with a lot of debt that they are desperate to pay off. Enter The Salesman, played by Train to Busan’s Gong Yoo, who invites them to join a game, one with deadly repercussions. Sure, he’s only really in it for a few minutes but what a great few minutes those are.

The protagonist, who we see invited to the game first, Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-Jae), is drowning in debt and spends his time betting on horse races and scrambling to find ways to prove he’s a good dad to his 10-year-old daughter, who’s currently living with her mother and step-dad. As someone who also loves games, as we discover, he’s the perfect target for a competition where people play to win money.  

Once he’s recruited for the game, we find out that other than him, 455 others were also invited to join. We’re introduced to a large cast of characters, like an old man named Il-Nam (Hideo Kimura), the caring Ali (Anupam Tripathi), the mysterious Sae-Byeok (Hoyeon Jung), and the rowdy Mi-Nyeo (Stephanie Komure). There’s also the sneering Deok-Su (Paul Nakauchi) who builds a group of those loyal to him, proving his power through brute strength. Gi-Hun’s family friend, Sang Woo (Stephen Fu), is also there and the two start to form their own small pack as the game goes on. 

Many of the characters will annoy you, or betray you, but it’s hard to imagine that not happening in a game like the one they’re participating in. You’ll still find the ones you root for as they all compete in a series of challenges and reveal their true nature. In addition to how the characters develop and the fact that the players compete in large-scale childhood games, there are many twists in this series, from the deathly consequences of losing to a cop who tries to find out more about the game without getting caught. 

Though there are some parts that are a bit predictable, they will still tug on your heartstrings. This series does a good job of getting you to empathize with many of the characters who we see even for only a short amount of time considering the speed of the game and how many people are there. It’ll also have you on the edge of your seat as the characters we begin to learn more about put their lives on the line.

The show doesn’t only serve as a survival competition show, but also as a commentary on wealth and sadism, but that’s where these spoilers will end. If you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to watch the series for yourself! Just know that the biggest question of this high-stakes game in which people bet their lives for money is whether anyone truly wins at all. 

Squid Game is currently streaming on Netflix.