Ryu Jun-yeol As 3rd floor/Bae Jin-su
Ryu Jun-yeol plays 3rd floor/Bae Jin-su. Jin-su is the main character. He needs money badly. He gets a message offering a lot of money if he goes to a strange house. He goes there and finds it very hard to stay and he helps others.
Chun Woo-hee As 8th floor/Sera
Chun Woo-hee plays 8th floor/Sera. Sera is a rich woman who does not follow the rules. She chooses the 8th floor to get more money. She pretends to be nice but is really bossy and mean. She wants everything her way.
Park Jeong-min As 7th floor/Philip
Park Jeong-min plays 7th floor/Philip. Philip is good with numbers. He figures out that upper floors get more money. He tries to understand the game and helps others and he also funny and surprising.
Bae Sung-woo As 1st floor/Sang-Guk
Bae Sung-woo plays 1st floor/Sang-Guk. Sang-Guk is the poorest and needs money the most. He lives on the 1st floor and has a hard time. He tries to stay smart but gets upset with the rich people and he might be dangerous.
Moon Jeong-hee As 5th floor/Mun-Jeong
Moon Jeong-hee plays 5th floor/Mun-Jeong. Mun-Jeong is like a mother. She tries to protect everyone and she follows the rules. She wants to make more money and leave the game, but things are not too easy for her.
Yul-Eum Lee As 4th floor/Kim-Yang
Yul-Eum Lee plays 4th floor/Kim-Yang. Kim-Yang is unsure and changes her mind a lot. She first picks the 8th floor but moves to the 4th. She follows Sera and sides with the rich people.
Lee Zoo-young As 2nd floor/Chun Ja
Lee Zoo-young plays 2nd floor/Chun Ja. Chun Ja fights for herself and the poor people. She sees the truth about the game and supports Jin-su and She wants to help the lower floors.
Park Hae-joon As 6th floor
Park Hae-joon plays 6th floor. He is from a rich background and chose the 6th floor by chance. He tries to save money and understand the game and he teams up with Sera and uses mind games to control others.
Netflix made a new show that's like "Squid Game." It's about eight people stuck in a big building. They play games to earn money as time goes on.The story starts off mildly and mysteriously but kicks into full gear once the participants start to collaborate and figure out strategies for the game.
Eight people are selected seemingly at random and taken to an unknown location where they must choose a card with a number. Once they enter the game setting, their card number is associated with the floor they will be staying on. The basic premise is that they earn money every minute, but everything costs, and all of this is discovered within the first portion of the first episode. Everything is a limited resource, so the contestants must try to maximize their earnings while also extending their time.
The story feels a lot like "Lord of the Flies" smashed with "Big Brother." There’s also a film that this shares features with, but naming it might be too much of a spoiler.What makes this show interesting is the group working together to solve problems, which causes lots of conflict and tension. This, in turn, builds suspense and even dread for the audience. Frustratingly, we never see who's behind the production, we don't know where the prize money comes from, or how the mechanisms behind the scenes work. While that's not needed to understand the game and get invested in the character drama, some elements of not knowing can hamper different aspects of the final product.
One of the things I appreciate about this series is how the resource of time is always limited, just like in life. When the characters figure out how to maximize this resource, we as the audience become complicit in what goes down. It’s a very subtle execution of a pointed social commentary: what do we demand or crave, and what are we willing to do to get it? This applies both ways through the screen. It’s powerful without being loud, overt, or preachy.
At the beginning of the series, everybody is a stranger, but as each episode progresses, we dive more and more into the players' backgrounds. The participants try really hard to win more money. They start doing clever and sneaky things to get ahead.
The human drama drives up the engagement with the series and makes it very bingeable. It’s also exciting, but the content is heavy. It’s like the car crash on the side of the road—you just can’t tear your eyes away from the carnage.
For me, the one big drawback to the series is the lack of rationale or explanation as to the point of it all. We don’t know who or what is putting this game on, nor do we know where the resources come from. Without those master a-holes in "Squid Game," we can only blame the contestants for their choice of behaviors. There’s a tiny bit of sex, some self-love, some brief nudity, a lot of profanity, and a ton of brutal violence.