Netflix users are reacting to the most “ridiculous” aspect of reality show Squid Game: The Challenge.
Earlier this month, the game show version of Netflix’s biggest ever hit arrived, and it has quickly become the most-watched title on the streaming service.
The show sees 456 contestants take on the playground games featured in the Korean drama. Whereas players in the fictional drama get shot dead should they get eliminated from the competition, contestants featured in the game show are fitted with a sack of black ink that explodes when they’re out.
However, those participating in the series have clearly been instructed by producers to emulate getting killed, with many contestants shown to fall down in theatrical ways.
Viewers are reacting to this detail, with many calling it “dramatic” and “ridiculous”. One person was so entertained by the “amazing” way contestants were eliminated that they proclaimed: “This is why television was invented.”
”The way some of the contestants fall to the ground like they have actually been shot dead on the Red Light, Green Light challenge is peak cinema,” one viewer wrote, with another adding: “OMFG it’s so freaking over the top and ridiculous.”
Others highlighted the “lean” that contestants do after being removed from the competition while sat down during a particular challenge.
“The way the players lean when they lose in Squid Game is so dramatic it’s funny,” one person stated. An additional viewer wrote: “I’m 100 per cent addicted to watching the contestants gently fall over when they get eliminated in the Squid Game reality show. I can’t get enough of them falling over, oh my God, why.”
Participants in this real-life, non-fatal version of the competition are competing for £3.7m, the largest lump sum jackpot in the history of reality TV.
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Each elimination adds $10,000 (£8,000) to the prize pool.
‘Squid Game: The Challenge’
(Netflix)
In his three-star review of the series for The Independent, Nick Hilton wrote: “The fear of death and anti-capitalist themes may have been replaced by a rabid consumerism (an apt metaphor for modern America, if not an intentional one), but Squid Game: The Challenge is obviously an epic of its genre.
Squid Game: The Challenge is available to stream on Netflix now.
