It’s the television sensation of the season! At least, that’s how Netflix has positioned Squid Game , the dystopian thriller from writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk …
It’s the television sensation of the season! At least, that’s how Netflix has positioned Squid Game, the dystopian thriller from writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk that has become the most-watched Netflix Original series of all-time. The streaming behemoth only shares its data on a voluntary basis, and at any rate has the power to push any show it wants onto the landing pages of its millions of subscribers; if a regular TV network had that kind of power, we’d have gotten a lot more seasons of Cop Rock. But, fittingly enough, Squid Game ‘s opening episode is all about blind trust (not that this kind of trust does anyone any good). Does it reward our trust with a show worth binge watching? Squid Game stars Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun, a 47-year-old divorced dad, failed restaurateur, degenerate gambler, and all-around sad sack. After an opening flashback in which he plays the titular game of tag with his friends as a kid, we learn all his details—including the fact that he lives with his aging mother, whose ATM card he steals in order to withdraw money for wagers at an off-track betting parlor. His horse comes in, but his winnings get pick-pocketed while he’s on the run from the loan sharks to whom he owes money. (They make him sign an IOU with his own bloody fingerprint.) Since it’s his daughter’s birthday, he uses what little cash he has left to buy her some greasy fast food and a boxed toy from an arcade crane machine, which turns out to be a cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun. So yeah, it’s a bad day all around. Then it goes from bad to weird. A mysterious man in a suit approaches him in a subway station—Gi-hun is at first convinced he’s gonna try to tell him about Jesus—with an offer. If he can defeat the man in a little game of skill and chance, he’ll win 100,000 won; if he loses, the mystery man will slap him in the face. Countless slaps later, Gi-hun finally wins the game and pockets the money, along with the man’s business card and an offer: He can make more, much more, if he calls the man up and plays games like this one for a few days. When he finally returns home to his mom’s, she informs him what his kid balked at telling him herself: His daughter, her mother, and her stepdad will all be moving to the United States next year.
