Netflix – “Squid Game”: In the depths of superficiality

Subjunctives are the spines of missed opportunities. If only I had done more sports, taken out liability insurance, learned vocabulary or what Seong Gi-hun constantly hears in a series sensation like no other: “Took the plane!” Namely to the USA, where the gambling addicted South Korean is after his victory in the murderous “Squid Game” wanted to make a profit of 45.6 billion won, the equivalent of around 33 million euros. Actually – subjunctive.

Because in the indicative he turns around shortly before checking in and registers again for this crazy competition that only one participant can survive. The South Korean production “Squid Game” brought Netflix 142 million hits in four weeks, making it the most successful streaming series of all time to date. Their continuation was therefore out of the question. But so does your content. Finally, in the cliffhanger of the last episode of the first season, Gi-hun hints at the revenge campaign of the second season, which started at the end of December with a lot of PR noise.

In the first season, the heavily indebted man in his late forties was barracked with 455 comrades for a competition of life and death. Guarded by bizarrely uniformed guards, they had to play children’s games on a remote island, the losers of which die instead of being thrown out. Six globally acclaimed but also harshly criticized splatter episodes later, only Gi-hun remained. As a won billionaire, he was on the threshold of a carefree existence – if he hadn’t had any scruples.

But at the beginning of the sequel, he cuts a tracking device out of his neck and begins to recruit like-minded people in order to put a stop to the mysterious power behind the inhumane spectacle. Unlike the first season, the new one is a little less about modern gladiator fights. While director Hwang Dong-hyuk once aimed his own script at the growing fan base of South Korean pop culture, Lee Jung-jae’s main character now puts moral questions at the center of the plot.

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“Those were just people who had already lost the game anyway, and new scum is being dumped into the world every day,” says the sinister organizer, rejecting the request to cancel the “Squid Game.” Because “the game will only end when the world changes.” That sounds critical of civilization, consumption and even capitalism. However, the philosophical superstructure of whether humans are humans’ worst enemies in the turbo-liberal surveillance state is ultimately just a means to an end: voyeuristic brutality.

The barometer of corpses known as the “Death Poll” is now rising even faster than three years before, because in a childishly decorated Circus Maximus there is a heavily armed battle between the participants and their security guards. For people gifted with empathy and reason, so much self-referential violence would be a permanent impulse to identify. It’s just too bad that Hwang pushes his manipulative masterpiece to perfection not only visually but also dramaturgically.

The seven-hour slaughter festival is like a tour bus of misanthropes that crashes into three trucks full of zombies, fireworks and warheads. As if Quentin Tarantino had filmed the new 007 on the set of the Sixties legend “Number 6” aka “The Prisoner”, you can hardly take your eyes off this candy-colored dystopia. Which has a lot to do with where they were filmed. Since the South Korean rapper Psy danced his “Gangnam Style” in 2012, the Asian-style plastic entertainment known as K-Pop has become global mainstream – and has also made its form-loving emptiness of content suitable for the masses.

The visual and sound language of countless films, series, bands and products from the divided peninsula consists of a mixture of brutal overacting and visually attractive superficiality, as if Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” film had fallen into a DVD box with Godzilla films. Neither the four Oscars for Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece “Parasite” (2019) nor Lee Sung Jin’s fascinating Netflix psychogram “Beef” (2023) can change that. Between juicy RomComs from “True Beauty” to “Girl Next Door” and the Nobel Prize in Literature for Hang Kang, “Squid Game” ranks roughly in the middle.

Almost infamously glorifying violence and the acting is sometimes at the lowest level of kung fu films from the 1970s, the suspense, settings and characters are mostly so captivating that the third season is probably worth it. And a prequel… And a spin-off… And the musical… Once the exploitation machine between Hollywood and Seoul is running, it’s hard to stop.

“Squid Game”, season 2, on Netflix