Okay I was a meeting earlier today and a woman mentioned this, now that I know what she was talking about gotta peep.
Squid Game (2021) Netflix Asian Drama Series (looks incredible) Drops 9/17
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Inteteresting
Netflix series Squid Game accused of plagiarising Japanese movie As The Gods Will
SEOUL - Viewers of Netflix series Squid Game have noticed that the K-drama has some scenes and plotlines which are similar to a 2014 Japanese movie, As The Gods Will.
The plots of both shows involve survival death matches using childhood games and there are also similarities in filmography, such as a close-up shot of a giant doll head and a countdown clock scene.
Squid Game, which premiered on the streaming service last Friday (Sept 17), has garnered rave reviews and is trending online. It stars Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo and Jung Ho-yeon.
The nine-episode series follows a group of desperados who have to play twisted versions of their childhood games for a chance to win 45.6 billion won (S$52.3 million).
Its director Hwang Dong-hyuk is best known for the 2011 movie Silenced, based on a true story about the abuse of deaf students in South Korea.
He had previously mentioned that the script for Squid Game had been in the works since 2008 to 2009, but was shelved as there was a lack of interest until Netflix came knocking a decade later.
In a press conference, he said: "It is true that (the first game is) similar, but after that, there aren't any similarities."
He pointed out that As The Gods Will was created in the 2010s, after his initial idea for Squid Game, which came to him after reading a lot of manga on the survival genre.
While he was hesitant to claim ownership of the story, he added: "But if I had to say it, I would say I did it first."
Netflix series Squid Game accused of plagiarising Japanese movie As The Gods Will
SEOUL - Viewers of Netflix series Squid Game have noticed that the K-drama has some scenes and plotlines which are similar to a 2014 Japanese movie, As The Gods Will. Read more at straitstimes.com.www.straitstimes.com
Yeah this looks good but not the same
As The Gods Will
yeah that is NOT the same at all...
Have you seen it yet?
As the Gods Will (film) - Wikipedia
They told them what the rules were, if they didnt mention something it means its not against the rules.
If you like Squid game you might also like Battle Royale
Netflix Sued by Internet Provider After Too Many People Watch ‘Squid Game’
Explosive viewership numbers of Squid Game are twisting the internet’s wires.
decider.com
‘Squid Game’ Success Earns Netflix a Lawsuit From Korea’s SK Broadband
Internet service provider SK says that Netflix should pay fees for generating traffic on its networks through shows like 'Squid Game.'
variety.com
Squid Game Craze: Netflix Sued by South Korea ISP Over Traffic Surge
Netflix said it will review SK Broadband's claim.
While,there were survival movies before Battle Royale. Battle Royale is the standard and none of them comes close....imo
Also,Alice in Borderland is another one. I think it's better than Squid Game...imo
Planet Squid Game
By Josef Adalian
“We always knew it was going to be a signature title for Korea, but there’s no way to have anticipated it would be this big.” Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo by Netflix
This story also ran in Buffering, Vulture’s newsletter about the streaming industry. Head to vulture.com/buffering and subscribe today!
Netflix’s ability to turn non-English-language shows into worldwide hits is nothing new, with series such as Narcos, Dark, La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), and Elite all breaking out in big ways over the past five years. But those triumphs are starting to pale next to the emerging success of Squid Game, a hugely addictive dystopian drama from South Korea that, barely two weeks after its premiere, has become a massive social-media phenom — and the No. 1 show on the streamer’s popularity charts in 90 countries, including the United States. Just how big is it? Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos went on record this week predicting that writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s creation might soon dethrone Bridgerton and The Witcher as the platform’s most sampled original-series launch ever.
As always, when you’re trying to quantify streaming audiences, it’s important to keep in mind that Netflix’s claims about the popularity of any of its titles aren’t independently verified and, for a dozen different reasons, should not be compared to more established measurements such as Nielsen ratings. That said, there is ample evidence beyond the streamer’s own spin to suggest Squid Game — in which a group of financially challenged people hoping to win millions end up in a Hunger Games–style competition for survival — really is turning into a legit pop-culture sensation and attracting a large worldwide audience.
➽ Parrot Analytics, whose “demand index” quantifies content popularity by looking at everything from online buzz and Google searches to the frequency of illegal downloads, this week called Squid Game “a word-of-mouth global sensation” and noted that, as of Sunday, the series is now the most in-demand show in the world, with 79 times as much audience interest as the average title. It’s gaining traction in the U.S., though not quite as rapidly as elsewhere: On Monday, the day before Sarandos made his comments, Squid Game was the 18th most in-demand U.S. series per Parrot, generating about 33 times the demand of a typical show here, and second only to consistent chart-topper Stranger Things among all Netflix originals.
➽ Squid Game has also broken through with audiences more quickly than some other recent Netflix hits, according to Parrot, soaring to the top of the company’s global-demand index faster than Money Heist’s third season or the debut of U.K. import Sex Education.
➽ Although Netflix didn’t widely distribute advance sceeeners of the show to the U.S. press — sending them only to outlets that requested them, a rep for the platform says — Squid Game is now slowly building a base of positive reviews, per aggregators Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. The amateur critics over at IMDb have also weighed in, pushing the show to No. 2 on the site’s ranking of the world’s most popular TV shows, ahead of Ted Lasso but just behind Sex Education.
➽ And yes, of course, the memes have arrived. Big time.
The near-instant enthusiasm for Squid Game is all the more impressive because the series isn’t based on any preexisting intellectual property. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo by Netflix
Netflix’s global TV head, Bela Bajaria, says her colleagues at Netflix Korea, under the guidance of regional content chief Minyoung Kim, had long expected big things from Squid Game, particularly when the first footage started coming in. And because consumption of K-dramas among U.S. Netflix subscribers has exploded by 200 percent in the past two years, the company was optimistic that Hwang’s epic story could overperform here and in other parts of the world. “But we could not imagine that it would be this big globally,” Bajaria tells Vulture. “We always knew it was going to be a signature title for Korea, but there’s no way to have anticipated it would be this big.”
We always knew it was going to be a signature title for Korea, but there’s no way to have anticipated it would be this big.— Bela Bajaria
The near-instant enthusiasm for Squid Game is all the more impressive because the series isn’t based on any preexisting intellectual property, such as a book or comics series, and thus didn’t arrive with a corresponding built-in fan base or even the name recognition of something like Lupin. And while Bajaria says the show did get a substantial promotional push in Korea and other Asian countries, there was hardly any marketing in the U.S. outside of a trailer tailored to American audiences. Instead, Squid Game seems to have broken out simply through what the exec calls “an organic fandom,” one fueled in no small part by Netflix’s ability to put the show into more than 200 million homes around the world at once. Subscribers “tweeted and TikToked about it, and it just grew through word of mouth,” Bajaria says. “People hear about it, people talk about it, people love it, and there’s a very social aspect to that, which does help grow the show outside of what we do.”
It also helps that, in addition to shelling out billions to produce its programming, Netflix invests millions more to make sure shows like Squid Game are easily watchable even for folks who don’t speak the language used in them. Netflix offers subtitles in 37 languages and dubs its shows in 34, far more than any other major streamer. That means subscribers who don’t have the patience for subtitles (read: a lot of Americans) are now much more likely to get invested in series and movies they otherwise would have skipped (dubbing scolds be damned).
This, along with streaming’s lack of time-and-space constraints, has dramatically expanded the potential audience for local-language content. Catching a new foreign-language movie, for example, once required residency in a big city or a tolerance for driving a few dozen miles in search of an art-house cinema. But in the streaming age, even if “you might not be the kind of person who would want to do that, you might click ‘play’ on Squid Game,” Bajaria says. Netflix’s decision to make international content widely available and easy to watch, she adds, “takes away the barrier of entry … and opens up different storytelling for more people.” And it’s clearly working in the U.S.: Bajaria says streaming of all non-English content is up 71 percent since 2019 among the platform’s American audience.
Bajaria, who spent two years focused on nothing but Netflix’s non-U.S. content before taking over the top content job at the streamer late last year, says her time spent outside Hollywood underscored the importance of investing in international creators. While American-made entertainment remains a massive draw globally and a big selling point for the service, Netflix’s ability to bulk up its subscriber base is increasingly dependent on giving non-American audiences shows and movies from local creators. “If we’re going to have members in dozens of countries, we want programming that they love and that resonates with them — they see themselves represented, they see their stories,” Bajaria says. That these shows can then break out and become hits in other regions — or, as with Squid Game, a global sensation — is an added bonus for the streamer. “If something travels globally, it means our members really enjoyed watching something they may not have seen before,” she adds. “But the local impact is the most important thing.”
If we’re going to have members in dozens of countries, we want programming that they love and that resonates with them.— Bela Bajaria
Local-language Netflix originals thriving globally may not be a new concept in 2021, but the speed and scale with which Squid Game has expanded suggests that the platform’s capacity to create its own franchises from content grown anywhere is getting exponentially stronger, vindicating a strategy that execs at the streamer started shaping years ago. When I spoke to Sarandos in 2018 for a series of stories about how Netflix operated, he told me that, as happy as he was with the early success of non-English shows such as Dark and Money Heist, he was shooting for something bigger. “The exciting thing for me would be if the next Stranger Things came from outside America,” he said. “Right now, historically, nothing of that scale has ever come from anywhere but Hollywood.”
Sarandos and other execs believed that would become more likely as the streamer’s base of subscribers in non-English-speaking countries expanded and even surpassed its core membership in the States. When that happened, they theorized, the language of a production would become almost irrelevant to its prospects for success.
It turned out to be a pretty smart theory, one that paved the way for Squid Game to become a whale of a hit.
During my chat with Bajaria, she also revealed a few more tidbits of information about Squid Game:
About That Name…
There was a debate over the title: Bajaria tells me there “definitely was a conversation” about what to call Squid Game, though the final decision wasn’t made in Hollywood. “The team in Korea debated the title, but when they watched it, they were like, ‘This is what it is. It’s interesting, and it’s kind of odd but really memorable.’ So they really did lean in and bet on the title. Now I can’t imagine it being called anything else.”
Season Two on the Way?
Nothing firm has been decided about a second season of Squid Game, but Bajaria sounds upbeat about the prospect and suggests that it would depend on Hwang’s schedule and his desires for how to proceed. “He has a film and other things he’s working on,” she says, noting the creator likes to collaborate with “other writers” who might come onboard for a new chapter. “We’re trying to figure out the right structure for him.”
By Josef Adalian
“We always knew it was going to be a signature title for Korea, but there’s no way to have anticipated it would be this big.” Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo by Netflix
This story also ran in Buffering, Vulture’s newsletter about the streaming industry. Head to vulture.com/buffering and subscribe today!
Netflix’s ability to turn non-English-language shows into worldwide hits is nothing new, with series such as Narcos, Dark, La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), and Elite all breaking out in big ways over the past five years. But those triumphs are starting to pale next to the emerging success of Squid Game, a hugely addictive dystopian drama from South Korea that, barely two weeks after its premiere, has become a massive social-media phenom — and the No. 1 show on the streamer’s popularity charts in 90 countries, including the United States. Just how big is it? Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos went on record this week predicting that writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s creation might soon dethrone Bridgerton and The Witcher as the platform’s most sampled original-series launch ever.
As always, when you’re trying to quantify streaming audiences, it’s important to keep in mind that Netflix’s claims about the popularity of any of its titles aren’t independently verified and, for a dozen different reasons, should not be compared to more established measurements such as Nielsen ratings. That said, there is ample evidence beyond the streamer’s own spin to suggest Squid Game — in which a group of financially challenged people hoping to win millions end up in a Hunger Games–style competition for survival — really is turning into a legit pop-culture sensation and attracting a large worldwide audience.
➽ Parrot Analytics, whose “demand index” quantifies content popularity by looking at everything from online buzz and Google searches to the frequency of illegal downloads, this week called Squid Game “a word-of-mouth global sensation” and noted that, as of Sunday, the series is now the most in-demand show in the world, with 79 times as much audience interest as the average title. It’s gaining traction in the U.S., though not quite as rapidly as elsewhere: On Monday, the day before Sarandos made his comments, Squid Game was the 18th most in-demand U.S. series per Parrot, generating about 33 times the demand of a typical show here, and second only to consistent chart-topper Stranger Things among all Netflix originals.
➽ Squid Game has also broken through with audiences more quickly than some other recent Netflix hits, according to Parrot, soaring to the top of the company’s global-demand index faster than Money Heist’s third season or the debut of U.K. import Sex Education.
➽ Although Netflix didn’t widely distribute advance sceeeners of the show to the U.S. press — sending them only to outlets that requested them, a rep for the platform says — Squid Game is now slowly building a base of positive reviews, per aggregators Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. The amateur critics over at IMDb have also weighed in, pushing the show to No. 2 on the site’s ranking of the world’s most popular TV shows, ahead of Ted Lasso but just behind Sex Education.
➽ And yes, of course, the memes have arrived. Big time.
The near-instant enthusiasm for Squid Game is all the more impressive because the series isn’t based on any preexisting intellectual property. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo by Netflix
Netflix’s global TV head, Bela Bajaria, says her colleagues at Netflix Korea, under the guidance of regional content chief Minyoung Kim, had long expected big things from Squid Game, particularly when the first footage started coming in. And because consumption of K-dramas among U.S. Netflix subscribers has exploded by 200 percent in the past two years, the company was optimistic that Hwang’s epic story could overperform here and in other parts of the world. “But we could not imagine that it would be this big globally,” Bajaria tells Vulture. “We always knew it was going to be a signature title for Korea, but there’s no way to have anticipated it would be this big.”
We always knew it was going to be a signature title for Korea, but there’s no way to have anticipated it would be this big.— Bela Bajaria
The near-instant enthusiasm for Squid Game is all the more impressive because the series isn’t based on any preexisting intellectual property, such as a book or comics series, and thus didn’t arrive with a corresponding built-in fan base or even the name recognition of something like Lupin. And while Bajaria says the show did get a substantial promotional push in Korea and other Asian countries, there was hardly any marketing in the U.S. outside of a trailer tailored to American audiences. Instead, Squid Game seems to have broken out simply through what the exec calls “an organic fandom,” one fueled in no small part by Netflix’s ability to put the show into more than 200 million homes around the world at once. Subscribers “tweeted and TikToked about it, and it just grew through word of mouth,” Bajaria says. “People hear about it, people talk about it, people love it, and there’s a very social aspect to that, which does help grow the show outside of what we do.”
It also helps that, in addition to shelling out billions to produce its programming, Netflix invests millions more to make sure shows like Squid Game are easily watchable even for folks who don’t speak the language used in them. Netflix offers subtitles in 37 languages and dubs its shows in 34, far more than any other major streamer. That means subscribers who don’t have the patience for subtitles (read: a lot of Americans) are now much more likely to get invested in series and movies they otherwise would have skipped (dubbing scolds be damned).
This, along with streaming’s lack of time-and-space constraints, has dramatically expanded the potential audience for local-language content. Catching a new foreign-language movie, for example, once required residency in a big city or a tolerance for driving a few dozen miles in search of an art-house cinema. But in the streaming age, even if “you might not be the kind of person who would want to do that, you might click ‘play’ on Squid Game,” Bajaria says. Netflix’s decision to make international content widely available and easy to watch, she adds, “takes away the barrier of entry … and opens up different storytelling for more people.” And it’s clearly working in the U.S.: Bajaria says streaming of all non-English content is up 71 percent since 2019 among the platform’s American audience.
Bajaria, who spent two years focused on nothing but Netflix’s non-U.S. content before taking over the top content job at the streamer late last year, says her time spent outside Hollywood underscored the importance of investing in international creators. While American-made entertainment remains a massive draw globally and a big selling point for the service, Netflix’s ability to bulk up its subscriber base is increasingly dependent on giving non-American audiences shows and movies from local creators. “If we’re going to have members in dozens of countries, we want programming that they love and that resonates with them — they see themselves represented, they see their stories,” Bajaria says. That these shows can then break out and become hits in other regions — or, as with Squid Game, a global sensation — is an added bonus for the streamer. “If something travels globally, it means our members really enjoyed watching something they may not have seen before,” she adds. “But the local impact is the most important thing.”
If we’re going to have members in dozens of countries, we want programming that they love and that resonates with them.— Bela Bajaria
Local-language Netflix originals thriving globally may not be a new concept in 2021, but the speed and scale with which Squid Game has expanded suggests that the platform’s capacity to create its own franchises from content grown anywhere is getting exponentially stronger, vindicating a strategy that execs at the streamer started shaping years ago. When I spoke to Sarandos in 2018 for a series of stories about how Netflix operated, he told me that, as happy as he was with the early success of non-English shows such as Dark and Money Heist, he was shooting for something bigger. “The exciting thing for me would be if the next Stranger Things came from outside America,” he said. “Right now, historically, nothing of that scale has ever come from anywhere but Hollywood.”
Sarandos and other execs believed that would become more likely as the streamer’s base of subscribers in non-English-speaking countries expanded and even surpassed its core membership in the States. When that happened, they theorized, the language of a production would become almost irrelevant to its prospects for success.
It turned out to be a pretty smart theory, one that paved the way for Squid Game to become a whale of a hit.
During my chat with Bajaria, she also revealed a few more tidbits of information about Squid Game:
About That Name…
There was a debate over the title: Bajaria tells me there “definitely was a conversation” about what to call Squid Game, though the final decision wasn’t made in Hollywood. “The team in Korea debated the title, but when they watched it, they were like, ‘This is what it is. It’s interesting, and it’s kind of odd but really memorable.’ So they really did lean in and bet on the title. Now I can’t imagine it being called anything else.”
Season Two on the Way?
Nothing firm has been decided about a second season of Squid Game, but Bajaria sounds upbeat about the prospect and suggests that it would depend on Hwang’s schedule and his desires for how to proceed. “He has a film and other things he’s working on,” she says, noting the creator likes to collaborate with “other writers” who might come onboard for a new chapter. “We’re trying to figure out the right structure for him.”
I gotta watch this
seriously it was sooo bad...
they translate the language so "literal" that is loses some of it's impact
the whole time i was like we wouldn't say THAT like that...
a lot of from foreign films suffer from this though
they need to do a rough draft translation and then send it to some real actors and screen writers to polish it up
I made a discussion thread last year.
Player 456's Fate Is Sealed - Why Gi-hun Dyed His Hair Red in Squid Game
Image Source: Netflix The opening notes of Johann Strauss II's "The Blue Danube" will forever have me on the edge of my seat thanks to Netflix's nail-bite-worthy Korean drama Squid Game. Minutes into the first episode, hundreds of players flood the arena of a remote experimentation facility...
He lost his mother and was grieving. Probably ain't wash his own ass for a year. He blanked out for awhile. What he had seen and did in the games to save his mom then to make it through all of that to come home to a dead mom shit! Give me a minute. Fuck them kids and old lady shops they're still alive I almost wasn't and my mom ain't.
Is anyone suprised, that it was all for the pleasure and enjoyment of cacs?
No , cacs are evil parasites and faggots
Not at all Cads will be Cacs, bet these Cacs in Hollywood try to make their own fucked up version of this like they always do, but who is to say rich Cacs aren't doing shit like this already alot of people come up missing every year and when homeless people vanish no one cares just keep that in mind.
Homie did look like hadn’t bathed in a year, he was definitely grieving.
Haven't you realise that on weekends all they play on local tv are those dateline boyfriend murders girlfriend type show, then on Lifetime a channel who markets to women is all about the hot babysitter who is trying to steal the husband
I knew something was up when a character said something that just didn’t sound like something a Korean would say at that moment. It was damn near American slang but I forgot what it was.
It’s said that they butchered the translation so bad.
Yeah trust I got that
still didn't like that part but man oh man he was quick to press redial
I knew something was up when a character said something that just didn’t sound like something a Korean would say at that moment. It was damn near American slang but I forgot what it was.
It’s said that they butchered the translation so bad.
I'm surprised it was so off
To the point that it didn't convey the STORY and EMOTION properly.
That's a big issue
One of the reasons Lupin was so popular was the excellence of the voice actors.
I agree 100%!
Oh wow man you know what he might be in the 2nd stage of grieving.
1 denial and isolation, 2 anger, 3 bargaining, 4 depression, and 5 acceptance. Maybe pointing his anger at the game hosts.
I'll check out Alice In Borderland & Battle Royale.
Alice in borderland just doesn't pull you in like squid game does.
I like this take
I really gotta watch that.
Squid Game Actress Couldn’t Complete The Honeycomb Challenge In Real Life
Jung Ho-yeon isn't quite as dextrous as Sae-byeok.
screenrant.com
South Koreans are bemused by the global success of “Squid Game”
Yet its theme of social injustice is a globally appealing one
Squid Game this, Squid Game that. As with much of the world, you’ve likely spent the past week binging Netflix’s inescapable Korean hit series. And now, after such a stretch spent in a headspace of gory survival, you’re not exactly ready to transition back to lighter fare like, say, the Packed to the Rafters reboot or whatever Ted Lasso’s about (footy fans with dad issues?).
Despair not because brutal dystopian madness is in vogue right now (eh, who knows why) and your thirst for bloody-minded content is a mere click away from being satisfied. Enjoy the following suggestions, if that’s the right word for it.
Alice in Borderland (Netflix)
This 2020 Japanese series, set in a dystopian Tokyo, has surged in popularity on Netflix after Squid Game‘s success thanks to its similarly-toned graphic violence and brutal games of survival. While it lacks Squid Game‘s biting capitalist allegory, playing more like a commentary on the escapist pathology of video games, the series dives deep into its characters’ alliances and betrayals.
Battle Royale (Shudder)
The cult 2000 Japanese film, about a group of high school students dumped on a remote island and forced to fight to the death by a government keen on curbing juvenile delinquency, set the template for Squid Game‘s sadistic survival horror. Squid Game’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has admitted the show’s premise came to him more than a decade ago when “I was in financial straits myself and spent much time in cafes reading comics including Battle Royale and Liar Game.”
Sweet Home (Netflix)
Another Korean horror show that’s found a renewed audience thanks to Squid Game‘s popularity, this series, which debuted on Netflix last December, should at least curb your lingering bloodlust. More cartoonish than Squid Game‘s social satire, it follows a group of residents trying to stay alive in an apartment building infected with gruesome monsters (yes, more gruesome than Squid Game’s horrific gangster Deok-su).
The Society (Netflix)
Unfairly cancelled after just one season by Netflix thanks to the pandemic’s effect on its production budget, this dystopian teen drama - a sort of Lost meets Dawson’s Creek (imagine pitching that with a straight face) - was mesmerising in its “I wonder what I would do?” logic. As with Squid Game, it’s a Lord of the Flies-type scenario, with characters battling between self-interest and the greater good.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head (BBC)
If you’re intrigued by Squid Game’s mask-donning illuminati, those champagne-swilling faceless few who revelled in watching ordinary people bludgeon each other to death for money, then there’s probably a thousand depressing YouTube wormholes you could fall down. Instead, try Can’t Get You Out of My Head, British documentarian Adam Curtis’ densely researched exploration of power, corruption, conspiracy theories, and the endless struggle between individualism and collectivism.
The Wilds (Amazon Prime Video)
Another recent Lord of the Flies-riffing teen drama, this one centres on a group of girls stranded on a remote island after a plane crash who are unaware they’re actually part of a sick social experiment run by none other than Rachel Griffiths. If your favourite part of Squid Game was wondering how you’d fare among such a ragtag gang (like, are you a Sang-woo or an Ali?), this one should prove enlightening.
3% (Netflix)
One of Netflix’s original foreign-language productions, this Brazilian series, which launched its fourth and final season last August, is a spiritual precursor to Squid Game’s critique of capitalist dehumanisation. While heavy on the melodrama, it sets up its intriguing dystopian premise at the get-go: “The world is divided into two sides: one abundant, the other scarce. A selection process lies between them. At the age of 20, each person has one chance. The chosen ones never return. They are the 3%.”
My Octopus Teacher (Netflix)
This is just a suggestion for all those viewers who tuned into Squid Game expecting actual squid rather than bloody mass murder. If you thought that was traumatising, just wait till you see a grown man have an extra-marital affair with calamari.
amp.smh.com.au
Despair not because brutal dystopian madness is in vogue right now (eh, who knows why) and your thirst for bloody-minded content is a mere click away from being satisfied. Enjoy the following suggestions, if that’s the right word for it.
Alice in Borderland (Netflix)
This 2020 Japanese series, set in a dystopian Tokyo, has surged in popularity on Netflix after Squid Game‘s success thanks to its similarly-toned graphic violence and brutal games of survival. While it lacks Squid Game‘s biting capitalist allegory, playing more like a commentary on the escapist pathology of video games, the series dives deep into its characters’ alliances and betrayals.
Battle Royale (Shudder)
The cult 2000 Japanese film, about a group of high school students dumped on a remote island and forced to fight to the death by a government keen on curbing juvenile delinquency, set the template for Squid Game‘s sadistic survival horror. Squid Game’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has admitted the show’s premise came to him more than a decade ago when “I was in financial straits myself and spent much time in cafes reading comics including Battle Royale and Liar Game.”
Sweet Home (Netflix)
Another Korean horror show that’s found a renewed audience thanks to Squid Game‘s popularity, this series, which debuted on Netflix last December, should at least curb your lingering bloodlust. More cartoonish than Squid Game‘s social satire, it follows a group of residents trying to stay alive in an apartment building infected with gruesome monsters (yes, more gruesome than Squid Game’s horrific gangster Deok-su).
The Society (Netflix)
Unfairly cancelled after just one season by Netflix thanks to the pandemic’s effect on its production budget, this dystopian teen drama - a sort of Lost meets Dawson’s Creek (imagine pitching that with a straight face) - was mesmerising in its “I wonder what I would do?” logic. As with Squid Game, it’s a Lord of the Flies-type scenario, with characters battling between self-interest and the greater good.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head (BBC)
If you’re intrigued by Squid Game’s mask-donning illuminati, those champagne-swilling faceless few who revelled in watching ordinary people bludgeon each other to death for money, then there’s probably a thousand depressing YouTube wormholes you could fall down. Instead, try Can’t Get You Out of My Head, British documentarian Adam Curtis’ densely researched exploration of power, corruption, conspiracy theories, and the endless struggle between individualism and collectivism.
The Wilds (Amazon Prime Video)
Another recent Lord of the Flies-riffing teen drama, this one centres on a group of girls stranded on a remote island after a plane crash who are unaware they’re actually part of a sick social experiment run by none other than Rachel Griffiths. If your favourite part of Squid Game was wondering how you’d fare among such a ragtag gang (like, are you a Sang-woo or an Ali?), this one should prove enlightening.
3% (Netflix)
One of Netflix’s original foreign-language productions, this Brazilian series, which launched its fourth and final season last August, is a spiritual precursor to Squid Game’s critique of capitalist dehumanisation. While heavy on the melodrama, it sets up its intriguing dystopian premise at the get-go: “The world is divided into two sides: one abundant, the other scarce. A selection process lies between them. At the age of 20, each person has one chance. The chosen ones never return. They are the 3%.”
My Octopus Teacher (Netflix)
This is just a suggestion for all those viewers who tuned into Squid Game expecting actual squid rather than bloody mass murder. If you thought that was traumatising, just wait till you see a grown man have an extra-marital affair with calamari.
Squid Game finished? Here are eight things to watch
Raw the broad