‘A highly welcome return to this hellscape world’

This brutal Korean satire first aired in 2021 and became a global phenomenon. Its comeback was just as brutal, and this one is likely to be just as big of a hit.

Back in September 2021, an unusual Korean TV series that allegorized the evils of late capitalism became this year’s unexpected global hit. squid game Candy-colored sets, masked security guards running around in pink jumpsuits, and contestants in matching green jerseys take center stage on the show as they play traditional Korean childhood games together. Like the contestants in the game, they captivated viewers. And then the slaughter began.

The success of this creepy Korean horror series has made it a bona fide television phenomenon, remaining the most-watched show in Netflix history and now 265 million views. With hundreds of gruesome close-range murders, the show is also perhaps the streamer’s most brutal and violent show.

But all this violence is necessary, creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk would argue. “The Squid Game” is his cruel satire on South Korea’s wealth disparity and class disparity. As he and Netflix realized, the themes behind dystopian horror are universal, and the grotesque story was a huge hit around the world. A sequel season (and third season) was quickly produced, and now, three years on, series two is set to deliver a spine-chilling jolt to the holiday season, making the day after Christmas not so festive A release will take place.

Series 1 centers around gambling addict Song Ki-hoon (Lee Jeong-jae), who joins 455 other poor people who take part in a series of games in hopes of winning prizes. However, they find themselves trapped on an island playing games like marbles in front of an audience of mysterious masked cabals. It has a fatal twist where if you don’t win, you’ll be killed by the guards.

This will be a true slasher story. If it weren’t for the moral conundrum it posed to the players. Every time someone is killed, the prize increases by 100 million Korean won ($70,000/£55,000), and if the player is the last one standing, the prize goes up to 45.6 billion won ($31 million/£25 million). ) can be obtained. This is an attractive proposition for a group of desperate people, who are also free to leave the game, but only if the majority chooses to do so.

At the end of series 1, Ki-hoon “wins” and vows to find out the true mastermind behind the game, if victory means escaping death while watching over 400 people get slaughtered around him. (There are some spoilers ahead)

When we see him for the first time in the new season, it’s a cold, hard opening that instantly brings to mind the high-level gorecore of the first series. He strips naked in a public bathroom and bloody digs out the tracking chip implanted in his body. When a young boy entered the room, Ki-hoon casually said, “Excuse me…can I have five minutes?” Jeong-jae’s perfectly comically timed laugh welcomely eases the tension – this second series is definitely funnier than the last – and the episode The rest of ‘s leans towards the humor of Ki-hoon recruiting members for the most part. His mob squad of former loan sharks.

However, the audience is lulled into a false sense of security by the arrival of a comedic gang of thugs that Ki-hoon hires to raid Seoul’s subway stations. They’re trying to find the recruiter, the guy in the suit who plays the paper envelope. Dakuji Once you start the game and recruit players for squid games, the bloodshed begins again. You will never be able to play rock, paper, scissors the same way again.

Later episodes will see Ki-hoon drawn back into a whole new round of squid games. But this time, he’s there to expose the mysterious frontman (Lee Byung-hun, who looks absolutely horrifying) who is the leader of the game. Viewers have recognized the character from the first series, a privilege not afforded to Ki-hoon. If he infiltrates elsewhere, he will not be able to establish a connection.

With all the previous participants killed off, director Hwang had the luxury of having a largely blank slate of characters for the second series, focusing on the fascinating backstories of this motley new crew. I have a mother and a son who is a gambling addict. They were both surprised to see another person there. A vulnerable young woman, a former Marine, a crypto influencer, and a menacing drug-popping rapper (a nice Easter egg for Korean music fans, performed enthusiastically by rapper Choi Seung-hyun). Also known as TOP) He lost all his money after purchasing cryptocurrencies recommended to him by the aforementioned influencer.

But this time, there’s also the origin story of No-eul (a quietly passionate Park Gyu-young), a desperate woman who fled North Korea but was forced to leave her baby behind, and discovers that she is one of the security guards. It became clear. A clever plot twist is added to this frightening fable.

What’s interesting about this series is that Ki-hoon is treated like Cassandra when he returns to the game to warn the contestants of their impending death. They either don’t believe him or don’t want to believe him. In the age of fake news, contestants can assume anything that benefits them is true. That Ki-hoon is a “madman” or that he is a plant.

This split in opinion forced the contestants to vote on whether or not to continue the game, with teams “X” (voting to abort the game) and “O” (voting to continue the game) It gets even more intense when we split up. In a well-observed microcosm of our own divided society, this spills over into hateful violence: online, in politics, in culture wars. The gruesome four-minute strobe-lit brawl is probably the most brutal scene you’ll see on TV all year (along with other organ-harvesting scenes that require you to watch with your hands in your eyes). But it also highlights how people are manipulated by those in power to turn against each other rather than fighting together against the roots of evil.

In the press notes for the new series, director Hwang said: “Through the players of the game, we wonder: Isn’t this what our society is like now? Aren’t these people who we are? It was a strange thing.” It was surreal 10 years ago, but unfortunately it’s very real now. “Squid Game” has no resolution to the fictional bleak and sadistic world it presents or the real world it reflects. Just a reminder that the house always wins at the expense of the players.

There’s no doubt that the second installment in the Squid Game series is likely to be just as big as the first. The game is similarly surreal and perverted, with just as many murders and plenty of gunfights. It is also confirmed that this role is the role of a lifetime for Lee Jeong Jae, whose expressive face conveys the horror of what he is witnessing. The only voice of reason in a world of madness. he won Emmy Award for Best Male Actor in a Drama 2022;The next ceremony will have even more people attending the show.

It’s a little longer at seven episodes, two episodes shorter than the previous series, but some of the recurring voting and gunfight scenes can drag on. It also felt obvious from the start that a double-crossing character was going to be revealed. We welcome you back to this hellish world. The series ends abruptly. It includes a cliffhanger and a flash of a mid-credits scene that sets the stage for the third series, due to be released in 2025. It’s a tortuous and frustrating ending for viewers, but isn’t that the name of the game?

Squid Game Series 2 will be released on Netflix on December 26th.