The brutal Korean satire turned a worldwide phenomenon when it first aired in 2021. Its return isn’t any much less savage – and appears more likely to be as large successful this time round.
Again in September 2021, an uncommon Korean TV sequence that was an allegory for the ills of late capitalism turned the shock world hit of the 12 months. Squid Recreation lured viewers in – just like the contestants within the recreation on the centre of the present – with candy-coloured units, masked guards working round in pink jumpsuits and contestants cutely wearing matching inexperienced tracksuits, as all of them performed conventional Korean childhood video games collectively. Then, the butchering started.
The success of the macabre Korean-language horror sequence was such a real TV phenomenon that it stays Netflix’s most watched present of all time, with at present greater than 265 million views. It is arguably the streamer’s most gory and violent present too, with a whole lot of grotesque, point-blank murders.
Nonetheless, all this violence is important, creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk would argue, as Squid Recreation is his brutal satire on the wealth divide and sophistication disparity in South Korea. As he and Netflix came upon, the themes behind the dystopian horror are common, and the grotesque story was a smash hit internationally. A follow-up season (and a 3rd) had been promptly commissioned, and now, three years on, sequence two will ship a shiver down spines within the vacation season, with its not-so-festive launch the day after Christmas Day.
Sequence one centred round Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a playing addict who joins 455 different destitute individuals who comply with play a sequence of video games within the hope of successful some cash. However they discover themselves trapped on an island enjoying video games like marbles – in entrance of an viewers of a mysterious masked cabal – with a lethal twist: in the event that they fail to win, they’re murdered by the guards.
This might be a straight-up slasher story; had been it not for the ethical conundrum it requested of the gamers. The prize fund goes up 100 million Korean gained ($70,000/£55,000) each time someone is killed, that means that the gamers might win as much as 45.6 billion gained ($31m/£25m) if they’re the final one standing; a tempting proposition to the determined assembled group, who’re additionally free to depart the video games – however provided that the bulk chooses to take action.
The ending of sequence one noticed Gi-hun “win” – if there’s any triumph in escaping dying however watching greater than 400 individuals slaughtered round you – and vowing to seek out out who was actually behind the video games. (Some spoilers forward)
The primary time we see him within the new season, it is a chilly, onerous open that immediately harks again to the excessive ranges of gorecore of the primary sequence. He is bare in a public toilet and bloodily gouging out monitoring chips which were implanted in his flesh. When a younger boy enters the room, Gi-hun says nonchalantly: “I am sorry…might you give me 5 minutes?” The chuckle raised on this excellent comedian timing from Jung-jae welcomingly cuts the stress – this second sequence is undoubtedly funnier than the final – and units up the remainder of the episode which for essentially the most half leans into the humour of Gi-hun recruiting the mob-squad of his former mortgage sharks.
However the viewers is lulled right into a false sense of safety with these comedic gang of goons employed by Gi-hun to scour the subway stations of Seoul. They’re looking for the recruiter, the person within the go well with who performs the paper envelope ddakji recreation and recruits gamers for Squid Recreation, and once they do, the bloodshed begins once more. You may by no means be capable of play Rock, Paper, Scissors in the identical gentle once more.
The later episodes discover Gi-hun pulled again right into a brand-new spherical of Squid Recreation. This time, although, he is there to show the chief of the video games, the mysterious Entrance Man (Lee Byung-hun, in full chilling type), who viewers will recognise from the primary sequence – a privilege not afforded to Gi-hun, who’s unable to make the connection when he pops up undercover elsewhere.
With all of the previous contestants being killed off, director Hwang has the posh of getting an virtually clean slate for characters for the second sequence, and he is zoned in on some gripping again tales of this new motley crew. There is a mom and her gambling-addict son, each startled to seek out the opposite is in there; weak younger girls, ex-Marines, a crypto influencer and a menacing, pill-popping rapper (in a pleasant easter egg to Korean music followers, performed with gusto by rapper Choi Seung-hyun, in any other case often called T.O.P.) who has misplaced all his cash after shopping for crypto-currency really useful by the aforementioned influencer.
This time round, nonetheless, there’s additionally the origin story of a determined girl, No-eul (the quietly intense Park Gyu-young) who escaped North Korea however who was pressured to depart her child: the reveal that she’s one of many guards provides an additional layer of intelligent intrigue to this menacing fable.
What’s attention-grabbing on this sequence is that Gi-hun, going again into the sport to warn the contestants of their impending dying, is handled like Cassandra: both they do not imagine what he is saying, or they do not need to. Within the period of pretend information, the contestants can persuade themselves of something that is of their pursuits to be true: that Gi-hun is a “lunatic” or that he is a plant.
This divide in opinion solely intensifies when the contestants are pressured to vote on whether or not to proceed the sport, and are break up into the groups “X” (who vote to depart the sport) and “O” (who need to play on), and in a well-observed microcosm of our personal splintered society – on-line, in politics and in tradition wars – this spills over into hate-filled violence. A four-minute sequence of a horrifying strobe-lit brawl is maybe essentially the most savage scene you may see on TV all 12 months (alongside another organ-harvesting pictures that’ll should be watched with palms over eyes); however highlights how the individuals are manipulated by these in energy to activate one another, moderately than combating the foundation of the evil collectively.
In press notes for the brand new sequence, director Hwang mentioned: “Via the gamers within the recreation, I needed to ask, is not this what our society seems to be like now? Aren’t these individuals precisely who we’re? Issues that had been weird and unrealistic a decade in the past have sadly change into very sensible now.” Squid Recreation has no options for the fictional bleak and sadistic world it presents, nor for the true world it displays; solely a reminder that the home all the time wins on the expense of the gamers.
There is no doubt that Squid Recreation sequence two is more likely to be as large as the primary. The video games are simply as surreal and perverse, the killings simply as prolific, the shoot-outs plentiful. It additionally confirms it is the position of a lifetime for Lee Jung-jae, whose expressive face conveys the horrors of what he is witnessing; the only real voice of cause in an insane world. He gained an Emmy for finest male actor for the drama in 2022; certainly extra can be on their method for the present on the subsequent ceremony.
Whereas it is a bit of lengthy – at seven episodes, it is two episodes shorter than the final sequence, however a number of the repetitive voting and gun-fight scenes can drag – and the reveal of a double-crossing character felt apparent from the beginning, it is a extremely welcome return to this hellscape world. The sequence ends abruptly; with each a cliffhanger and a flash of a mid-credits scene that units issues up for a 3rd sequence, due out in 2025. It is a tortuous, irritating finish for viewers, however hey, is not that the secret?
Squid Recreation sequence 2 is launched on Netflix on 26 December.