There’s something oddly unique to consuming survival horror game cinema that is reminiscent of watching gladiators fight for their lives — the gore, ruthlessness and will to stay alive are all components humans are oddly drawn to. Voyeurs are intrigued by the human decisions made for self-preservation when life and limb are on the line, which likely accounts for the magnetism and success of Netflix’s new South Korean series, Squid Game.
Squid Game has been viewed by 111 million accounts since debuting on Netflix on September 17, according to the streaming service. The nine-episode series has ranked first place on Netflix’s Top 10 lists in 94 countries around the world.
Many survival game movies or series, including Squid Game, are centered around the root of all evil —money. During the episodes, audiences watch desperate debtors subject themselves to deadly games, normally played by children, as an attempt to amass a large sum of money. A bloody version of red light-green light, tug of war and marbles are a few of the twisted games that ensue.
In Squid Game and in other films like it, the wealthy play God, and like God, usually remain unseen by the participants. Those who hold the money, hold the power, make the rules and spectate. In Squid Game, the people controlling the games wear masks to conceal their identities, just as the big wigs in the series do. The VIPs don animal masks, which speak to the animalistic, dog-eat-dog nature they perpetuate onto the lower-class, as they watch at a safe distance from the playing field. Unable to see the puppet-masters pulling the strings, participants often feel like they’ve been removed from reality which makes them more likely to act as such.
As a result of being plucked from everyday life and thrust into a tournament of death, players become completely disconnected from the real world and fully immersed in the games. Instead of names, the players are called by numbers and must wear a green, numbered tracksuit uniform.
The contenders are stripped of their clothes and other objects linked to their identities for a reason. Stripping pieces linked to their identity, like clothing, helps players lose themselves and act in line with their newfound, twilight-zone-like environment, performing dark acts they never thought they would. Addressing players with numbers in replace of names, and knowing little about one another, also allows contestants to eliminate each other with more ease than killing a person in the real world.
If you’ve recently developed a taste for terror from binging Squid Game, you’re in luck because the concepts listed above reoccur in the horror survival genre.
Scroll on for thrilling horror survival game films similar to Squid Game that put players’ minds, morality, muscle and will to survive to the test:
The 1997 film is the first installment of the franchise where strangers wake up in a cube and must figure out how to escape. One cube leads to another and quizzical characters are discovered in various cubes. The hostages team up and try to survive the boxed minefield fraught with booby-traps. Cube is another example akin to Squid Game and Circle where there is a distinct absence of the outside world. Once you’ve been confined into the peculiar world of Cube, it’s almost as though you’ve been cornered into an Escape Room crafted by an extraterrestrial being.
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This 2015 science fiction psychological horror thriller is about a process of elimination. In Cube and Squid Game fashion, captives suddenly awake wondering where they are. Strangers in Circle find themselves in a dark room where they’ve all been placed on individual red lights. After a strange noise, a person gets zapped to death, and the hair-raising process repeats itself. The participants quickly realize that the elimination is part of a game where they can get rid of one another through voting. Circle is a kill-or-be-killed scenario designed to test humanity and see which last man standing gets to walk out alive.
Netflix
Like Squid Game, this 2012 horror flick tests vulnerable players in need of money. Each contestant has a secret motive for the funds and must play a full game of "would you rather" to win. Players do what they must to stay alive and make it through all of the rounds to ultimately be the last person alive to make out with the cash.
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In this 2018 thriller, college friends take a trip to Mexico that could be their last. During their getaway, a stranger persuades the group to play a game of truth or dare. Little do the friends know that when the game starts a demon is awakened, and the pals must tell their truths and do their dares or suffer the fatal consequences.
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Gagged and afraid, twelve strangers open their eyes to an empty field in this 2020 Blumhouse production. Unsure of their surroundings or the intentions of the others like them, the players find themselves stuck in a web where they are hunted by wealthy elites.
HBOMAX
"Do you want to play a game?" is now one of the most chilling sentences thanks to 2004's Saw. In the film, two men wake up on opposite sides of a bathroom with their feet chained to pipes. The duo realizes that they've been kidnapped by a serial killer coined “Jigsaw,” and attempt to solve the puzzle at hand and escape. Like Squid Game, the manufacturer of the game chooses to remain in the shadows, or in this case, behind an altered voice recording and a creepy doll on a tricycle. Jigsaw instructs the men to "live or die, [and] make your choice."
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A mourning friend, Laine, sets out to summon her late best friend, Debbie, by playing with an antique Ouija board she found in the deceased's room. Laine attempts to make contact with Debbie to say her goodbyes, but instead accidentally taps the wrong entity and unlocks a portal she has trouble closing.
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