The First Squid Game Reality Competition Trailer Is Appropriately Creepy — Watch

Matt Webb Mitovich
·2 min read
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Young-hee is doing that highly unsettling thing — swiveling her giant doll head — in the first teaser trailer for Squid Game: The Challenge, the competition series based on Netflix’s megahit drama.

“The world’s most notorious game becomes reality,” we are told/warned as “The Blue Danube Waltz” wafts through the brightly colored halls and uncanny sets that mimic the South Korean survival drama. As for actual gameplay, we only get a brief glimpse of the tracksuit-clad players entering the “playground” for a game of “Red Light Green Light” — all presumably praying that no snipers/rifles are involved.

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Premiering in November, Squid Game: The Challenge is a reality competition based on the hit Korean drama that set Netflix viewership records with its September 2021 release, and then went on to earn 14 Emmy nominations. (The original Squid Game earned a Season 2 renewal last June.)

Squid Game: The Challenge recruits 456 players to compete for $4.56 million by playing games inspired by the original series as well as some new ones, with the goal of avoiding elimination. Thankfully, though, the losers won’t be killed, as they were in the original Squid Game.

“The stakes are high, but in this game, the worst fate is going home empty-handed,” the official press release assured us.

When the reality spinoff was first announced, some criticized the concept for trivializing a deadly serious and violent drama that exposed the ugly underbelly of capitalism. But Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk defended the competition series to reporters in last fall’s Emmys press room, saying: “I think that even though our show does carry quite a heavy message… I feel like when you take things too seriously, that’s really not the best way to go for the entertainment industry… I hope that this is going to be a great new direction for the industry overall.”

Will you be watching Squid Game: The Challenge? Drop your thoughts in a comment below.

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