13 Other Deadly Games to Watch If You Enjoyed Squid Game
With K-pop leading the way, South Korean art and culture have become incredibly popular around the world over the past few years. Netflix has acquired dozens of South Korean dramas for at least the past year, with some just getting started. Squid Game represents a new milestone – moving away from the niche with a big, big break in the Korean drama that everyone is watching, or at least talking about.
Of course, we’ve had our runs to this kind of thing – the deadly competition that young people usually (but not always) participate in – in the States: The Hunger Games , The Maze Runner , Saw, and to some extent the Divergent series. While these films and shows tend to be violent, often violent, there is a bit of humanity at the heart of the concept: yes, we do terrible things to each other, but the systems built around us force impossible choices to be made.
Keep in mind that since at least 2000 Battle Royale , Deathmatch has been a wildly popular genre, so there are tons of great examples just not available to American audiences. That being said, here are some films and shows that represent the breadth of the “let’s bring people together and get them to compete for prizes” genre.