A closed space, a group of strangers, an almost dystopian setting… the perfect ingredients
The shadow of ‘The Squid Game’ is long, and we are not just talking about the boom in Korean series that still lasts (and what remains: It is the most watched language on Netflix after English, and above the Spanish), but of the influence it has had, aesthetically and plot-wise. Starting with the second season of the series itself, which will arrive this year, and continuing with curious spin-offs such as the addictive authentic Netflix contest inspired by its tests.
And although there are films and series similar to ‘The Squid Game’ in their approach to a dystopian society symbolized by a set of cryptic rules and lethal consequences (from ‘The Hunger Games’ to ‘Alice in Borderland’, also Korean and released just a year before ‘The Squid Game’), we can consider ‘The 8 Show‘, an excellent direct exploitation. It just arrived on Netflix and understands and enhances everything we liked about the original hit.
In it, eight people who do not know each other agree to participate in a curious contest, apparently innocent and innocuous at first: they are inside an enclosure that simulates a small residential area, and they live in an eight-story building. Each one receives money with every passing minute (in different proportions), but they hardly know the rules. Coexistence and ambition will be the biggest obstacles to reach the prize.
All the codes that we like about the subgenre of dystopian contests (the setting here is not especially futuristic, but the simulacrum of society that is formed among the contestants is) are here: uniforms as cool as they are disturbing, replica of social hierarchies in small scale, symbolism, rules that they discover little by little, disparate characters and, in this case, even unexpected influence from another great dystopian piece with crazy rules: ‘The Hole’. A great way to lose your mind over a good bag of bills.
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In Xataka | ‘El hoyo’: How it has managed to become one of the few Spanish dystopias that works
