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Plenty of violence, but less bite

Published

1 month ago

December 26, 2024

Prepared or not, right here comes “Squid Recreation.”

The South Korean horror sleeper that grew to become the most important Netflix sequence of all time is again for a second season, with extra lethal kids’s video games and deeply unsettling musical motifs. It is all the identical.

Besides it isn’t, as a result of three years later, the world by which “Squid Recreation 2” (streaming now, ★★ out of 4) returns is drastically completely different than it was in 2021. And a part of that distinction is the impact of “Squid” itself: What was as soon as a deeply stunning satire and critique of capitalism has turn into so standard and ubiquitous that it is too simply decreased to punchlines and memes.

So it’s in a brand new context and with main expectations that the most-viewed Netflix sequence returns to our streaming queues. All that hype does not do the brand new season any favors; it’s underwhelming and underdone. Some issues are the identical: It nonetheless has the piercing (Emmy-winning) efficiency from Korean actor Lee Jung-jae; the teal tracksuits and masked males in pink hoods have returned; and there may be blood and loads of stunning violence to go round. However there may be much less chew, much less idealism and seemingly much less care taken. The outlandishness of the plot requires a good bigger suspension of disbelief, and narrative threads are left dangling on the unsatisfying finish of the seven-episode season. There may be nice nuance and uniqueness misplaced.

General, the place as soon as there was shock, now it is simply, nicely, “ah.”

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Season 2 picks up precisely the place Season 1 left off, on an airport jetway with unlikely hero Seong Gi-hun (Lee) selecting to battle the puppet masters of the sadistic “video games” from Season 1. As you would possibly recall, Gi-hun received a fortune enjoying kids’s video games in a life-or-death battle with different impoverished gamers for the amusement of rich gamblers. As an alternative of taking his 45.6 billion received (roughly $31 million) and shutting the heck up, Gi-hun devotes his newfound wealth to looking for and shut down the video games. The primary episode rapidly jumps three years forward because the aggrieved man pays folks to look subway stations for the mysterious recruiter who as soon as invited him to the video games.

In the meantime, Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), a Seoul police officer who in Season 1 infiltrated the video games to search out his lacking brother, can be looking once more. He found that his brother, In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), was the masked “Entrance Man” in command of the entire operation. In-ho shot Jun-ho, who fell off a cliff however survived and was rescued by a fisherman. Now he spends his free time looking the handfuls of islands off the coast, hoping he’ll discover the one with all of the blood-soaked children’ video games.

With out spoiling an excessive amount of, Gi-hun ultimately lands again contained in the video games, the place he tries to save lots of lives among the many 455 new gamers, which function a brand new colourful solid of determined characters: a YouTuber who misplaced all of it backing the flawed cryptocurrency; a degenerate gambler and his mom; a trans lady who misplaced her livelihood when she got here out; and one other good buddy of Gi-hun’s (he is obtained associates in low locations, it appears).

It is all serviceable. The brand new video games are fascinating and thrilling (one even appears to be like like numerous enjoyable, aside from the entire you-die-if-you-lose factor). Lee stays an distinctive performer. The trans character Hyun-ju (performed by cisgender man Park Sung-hoon) is by far one of the best addition to the solid, providing a extremely completely different perspective than any of the gamers highlighted in Season 1.

However in any other case, Season 2 largely presents cognitive dissonance and frustration. The second half morphs into a reasonably generic motion set piece, crescendoing to a bitterly underwhelming climax and a conclusion that provides no form of closure. It provides the distinct impression that director and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote Seasons 2 and three as a single story and simply chopped it someplace within the center to lengthen the sequence for one more season for Netflix.

It is onerous in numerous methods to reckon with what “Squid” has turn into three years after the sequence took everybody from viewers to Hwang to Netflix abruptly. At its core, “Squid” is a deeply anti-capitalist fable, a pointy critique of South Korean tradition (and all capitalist tradition) and the deep inequities constructed right into a society chasing infinite financial progress. The unhealthy guys are wealthy gluttons, the great guys are the struggling poor. The sport is the system that retains one as chattel for the opposite.

However you’ll be able to’t ignore the fact by which “Squid” itself turns into a instrument of capitalism, as Netflix’s glittering crown jewel amongst “billions of hours seen” that is fodder for awards campaigns, tie-ins with the likes of Duolingo and a distasteful reality-TV spinoff. It is extratextual context that weakens the general critique throughout the sequence. And Season 2 does not serve Hwang’s said anticapitalist message, both; by the top it will get so wrapped up in particulars that it loses its political plot.

It is an enormous disgrace, and it is unclear what went flawed and who’s responsible. Did Hwang actually wish to proceed the story, or did the success of Season 1 pressure the present to last more than it ought to have? Will all of it make extra sense when Season 3, due in 2025, is launched?

Or will we discover ourselves as trapped in a doomed “Recreation” as Gi-hun is?