zondag 3 oktober 2021

TV Show Review - Squid Game

Season:
1
Genre: Thriller/ Drama
Number of episodes: 9
Year: 2021
Starring: Jung-jae Lee, Tom Choi, Greg Chun, Hae-soo Park, Hoyeon Yun, Hideon Kumura, Anupam Tripathi

Description: Hundreds of cash-strapped players accept a strange invitation to compete in children’s games. Inside, a tempting prize awaits with deadly high stakes. A survival game that has a whopping 45.6 billion-dollar prize at stake.

Review: Take “The Hunger Games”, “Alice in Borderland” and “Snowpiercer” together and you get the new South Korean series “Squid Game”. In the fiction series, we follow 456 candidates who participate in a game where a gigantic prize is at stake. What they don’t know is that the seemingly simple children’s games they have to play, if the rules are violated, result in death.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

So we meet Seong Gi-Hun, a man who lives with his mother and indulges in horse racing and excessive amounts of liquor. When he is chased by his creditors, cannot borrow money from anyone and loses his mother’s household money in a theft, he sees participating in the game as his salvation. To his great surprise, he meets his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo in the arena. A seemingly wealthy banker who studied at Seoul University, but got into trouble when he stole money from his clients.
What follows is a crazy game of ‘red light, green light’. In a giant arena on a desert island, a robot keeps a close eye on the candidates, but only those who make I across the red line withing the time limit advance to the next round. What the candidates don’t know is that anyone, when the robot turns around, moves slightly is inexorably shot. Pure panic soon breaks out and the children’s game turns into a battle for life and death.  
“Squid Game” is a wonderful variation on other juggernauts of the survival genre, such as “The Hunger Games” and “Alice in Borderland”. Unlike those, the creators did not create a fantasy world, but base it on capitalist society. A touch of “The Hunger Games” or “Snowpiercer’ is added when it eventually turns out that the macabre game serves as entertainment for the rich.
The everyone-againts-everyone mentality in “Squid Game” creates a lot of exciting situations. Yet the series does not disappoint in terms of depth of the characters and even friendship between them. While the characters are initially portrayed as losers, criminals or cheaters, throughout the series we get to see their true story. It leads to the fact that in the end everyone has a reason to win the game. As a viewer, you gradually start to begrudge different characters to win. We get to know, among other, Kang Sae-byeok, A North Korean woman who, with her younger brother, hopes to be reunited with her relatives abroad. Pakistani migrant Abdul Ali also hopes to leave South Korea thanks to the game.
Although, the games remain the most entertaining to watch. For example, the pace is a little slower in the second episode, mainly because the characters are deepened, but from then on “Squid Game” moves forward like a rocket.
In terms of acting it all seems to be decent, only at certain moments it sometimes sounds and looks a bit hysterical. Those who faint by the sight of blood should also be warned. “Squid Game” is very violent and bloody. They don’t hold back. In terms of cinematography and color grading, the series is outstanding.
Get ready for an exciting series that won’t leave you alone for a minute. “Squid Game” has everything you need for a wildly exciting stream marathon. A very strong series packed with suspense, plot twists and emotional and shocking moments. There is a reason why this series is the most streamed show on Netflix right now.

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