Netflix’s Squid Match YOUNGKYU PARK/Netflix

If you’ve been on the world-wide-web in the past two months, there is a great possibility you’ve heard about Squid Activity possibly via meme, tweet, or simple old fashioned evaluate kind. The new Korean series debuted on Netflix September 17, and has given that dominated the on-line dialogue thanks to its sheer WTF element. Though Korean culture has been earning its mark on western audiences in latest a long time with motion pictures like Parasite and pop teams these types of as BTS, this bona fide strike cements the nation as a 21st-century pop society juggernaut.

So… what is Squid Match?

Netflix describes the sequence as follows: “Hundreds of hard cash-strapped players settle for a weird invitation to compete in children’s game titles. Inside, a tempting prize awaits – with fatal superior stakes.” Whilst that delivers a nice minor overview, the streamer barely lets viewers know the a lot more outrageous elements of the display. If you believed tug-of-war was rough through your elementary faculty field working day, then you have got a further detail coming.

Trapped inside a candy-colored fortress and overseen by masked guards who remodel incredibly hot pink into a remarkably threatening coloration, players are pressured to participate in dementedly amped up variations of kids’ game titles to try out to win a $40 million cash prize. But in Squid Game, when you’re out, you are out. The gamers, all of whom are in desperate need of income for distinct causes, go from battling for the fortune to preventing for their life. It’s a display about the cutthroat nature of capitalism, equally practically and figuratively. In that feeling, it is a modern-day engage in on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 dystopian motion drama The Running Man.

PSA: it gets gory, folks—Squid Game is not for the squeamish!

Why are so a lot of men and women speaking about Squid Recreation?

Properly, for one matter, the exhibit has elicited universally beneficial reviews. Mix that with the quick increase in attractiveness of K-dramas on Netflix (we hugely endorse interval zombie piece Kingdom) and a imaginative critique of capitalism, and you’ve acquired oneself a strike. A good deal of Korean films have proven to be hits and received worldwide acclaim for their participating and action-packed choose downs of contemporary capitalism, from Best Photo winner Parasite to the Chris Evans-starring Snowpiercer and the bone-chilling zombie motion picture Prepare to Busan. Evidently, Squid Video game is continuing that tradition, a sequence that is whip-smart and entertaining in equivalent measure. It’s also totally batshit crazy in the greatest way feasible, which give it a social media-pleasant sheen of extremely sharable GIFs and OMG moments.

Okay, great—now exactly where can I check out Squid Match?

Squid Recreation premiered on Netflix on September 17 and is obtainable to stream in its entirety here. All 9 episodes of Period 1 dropped at the moment, ranging from 30 minutes to an hour very long, generating it excellent for a mid-7 days binge session. Regretably, director Hwang Dong-hyuk does not sound as if he’s up for a 2nd time, at minimum not in the rapid future.

What if I previously viewed Squid Recreation?

Superior for you, you’re in advance of the curve! Now that you’re accomplished with that bonkers thrill trip, there is a good deal more to observe just like it. Along with the new Korean motion pictures pointed out previously mentioned, other operates like Squid Recreation incorporate Japan’s controversially violent thriller from 2000, Struggle Royale, and 3%, a Brazilian series with course divide at the coronary heart of its aggressive conflict.


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Netflix’s New K-Drama ‘Squid Game’ is the Wildest Show of the Year