Squid game: an unhealthy game ZDNet

If you subscribe to Netflix or are on Twitter, you must have heard of Squid game. In the event that you missed it, let's come back to this phenomenon. This chronicle reveals elements of the plot.

A story already seen

Horror movie fans will see huge similarities with Escape Game, to the point that one wonders what part of real creation and what part of plagiarism. There are also similarities with 31 by Rob Zombie. When you are a horror movie connoisseur, there are two options in front of Squid game: you take the game and go to the end or you give up along the way.

Locking people up, to make them do things to avoid getting killed, is not really new in horror cinema. More recently, The Dare took up this framework: people locked in a room, without knowing why, having to perform actions to stay alive.

The only nuance was the motivation of the torturers and sometimes of the victims. In Squid game, players have a fairly simple motivation: to stay alive to collect money from other players. As in Highlander, at the end, there is only one left and we know from the first minutes of the series who will be the winner. We continue to scroll through the episodes for the path and the plot. We have the why, we have the end, we want to know the how.

Physical and digital disappearance

After an encounter with a curious character, all the players are more or less kidnapped and locked up in an undisclosed location. To monitor them, anonymous guards, hidden behind a mask, are themselves more or less held captive, with no means of communication with the outside world. If we can hear that the guards can prepare a more or less long period of absence, what about the prisoners?

This is one of the curious points of the series: 456 people disappear. In the lot, there are marginals and "administrative non-existent", whose disappearance may not worry. But in the 456 players, there are couples, people who have families, employees, etc. Including people wanted by the police and the mafia. Miraculously, no one questions. Phones no longer answer, people no longer send messages on social networks, no longer use their email, their smartphone, their connected TV and that doesn't worry anyone.

After all, it is a fiction so we can say that it is quite normal to see almost 500 people – counting the guards – vanish, for some permanently. This remains very paradoxical in a hyperconnected society, even more so in a country renowned for its high-tech.

Growing unease

Until the fifth episode, we get caught up in the game. We wonder how the hero will get out of it. We note in passing that the protagonists are not endearing with the exception of Ali, whom we want to save. The others are infuriating and we are almost relieved when they are finally eliminated from the game. For some, we clearly push a loud “phew”.

Where does the discomfort come from if we are in a hurry to complete the characters? Of the choices they make. If they are purely simply kidnapped during part of the game, following a vote, they are released. The lure of profit makes them voluntarily return to this macabre game. Certainly, the sum is significant and in some cases, one can understand.

However, apart from the North Korean refugee who wants to bring her mother and Ali, we do not understand. When do you tell yourself that you are going to risk your life, take others, just for money? Moreover, the last episode could be a modernized transposition of Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Here is a person who wanted money, who did everything to get it, but who still saw it very badly. He literally has the key to solving his problems, building a comfortable new life and even paying for sessions with a shrink. He still prefers to stay at the same stage as before his event.

This is where we end the series with discomfort: the hero did all this for nothing. The game will continue, the others died for nothing and he is addicted to shit.

Squidgame is available on Netflix.