Did the algorithm make them do it?
How else to clarify Netflix’s perverse choice to drop one in all its most violent merchandise on the day after Christmas. A lot for all that goodwill towards males jazz. Put away the eggnog, on which you would possibly gag whereas leaping again into the Squid Sport, the nihilistic and dazzling South Korean sleeper thriller from 2021 that took the world by storm (and got here from out of nowhere, shocking even Netflix).
Success begets extra, particularly within the streaming world, which could additionally account for the truth that the lethal sport doesn’t even resume till the third episode in a seven-part sequel. And also you received’t be stunned to be taught it ends in a grotesque cliffhanger, as a result of a Squid Sport 3 is coming someday in 2025. Why not as an Easter particular? Who wants The Ten Commandments after we can savor the ruthless guidelines of this savage enterprise, the place shedding a spherical of a stylized youngsters’s sport not solely will get you eradicated, however executed (along with your physique donated to a really diabolical trigger)?
Netflix is downplaying expectations that Squid Sport 2 will match or surpass the unique’s enchantment, however human (or inhuman) nature suggests in any other case. Because the unseen mastermind warns the primary season’s sole survivor, Gi-hun (Emmy winner Lee Jung-jae), “The sport won’t finish except the world modifications.”
Essentially the most intriguing side of the sequel is that Gi-hun’s quixotic campaign to cease the sport from inside, by re-entering the bloody area as participant 456, performs out in opposition to a brand new social experiment. This time round, the mysterious Entrance Man and his masked troops of their pink jumpsuits give the trapped and cash-strapped gamers an opportunity to finish the torment after every spherical. The sector turns into nearly equally divided into two camps: the X’s, who vote to finish the soul-crushing sport and spare their sad lives, and the O’s, whose greed for the kitty that grows exponentially with every dying outweighs their need for self-preservation.
Reflecting the polarized nature of a lot of the actual world, this fictional conceit pits the X’s and O’s into direct battle. Survive the subsequent sport, and you continue to won’t survive the subsequent evening within the dormitory. They’re all pawns in a labyrinth of tic-tac-woe.
This intrigue compensates considerably for the been-there, flinched-at-that feeling of the particular sport. We’ve walked these Escher-like pastel staircases earlier than, and the shock worth has diminished within the very long time between seasons. Sequence creator and Emmy-winning director Hwang Dong-hyuk doesn’t attempt to high himself, and he as soon as once more develops some compelling dynamics amongst this season’s new crew of sitting geese. Much less profitable is a subplot following policeman Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who like Ji-hun has a private motive to cease the sport, as he tries to find its hidden island location. One other subplot involving one of many masked snipers with a insurgent streak isn’t fleshed out sufficient to make a lot of an influence. And one of many main twists is telegraphed manner too early within the proceedings.
Finally, I discovered myself empathizing with one of many gamers observing a very intense spherical of mayhem, declaring, “I can’t watch. It’s making me anxious.” Anxious for certain, but in addition greater than just a little stressed. In contrast to the Season 2 climax of Netflix’s sensible The Diplomat, which nonetheless will get my coronary heart racing after I take into consideration the place it left off, the cliffhanger ending of Squid Sport 2 merely conveys the promise of extra distress and carnage earlier than it’s resolved. Merry post-Christmas!
Squid Sport, Season 2, Streaming Now, Netflix