Four international horror series to recapture that Squid Game vibe

(Each week, I’m publishing a new pop culture essay from a freelancer. Remember: Your subscription fee helps me pay these freelancers for their efforts! This week: Maya Capasso on the international horror series you should watch once you've finished Squid Game.)

South Korean auteur Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Netflix show Squid Game burst out of the horror community and into the mainstream in 2021.

The series follows a middle-aged father with a penchant for gambling who is drowning in debt. So he signs up for a mysterious game with the promise of substantial monetary gain, so long as he wins. When he and the other desperate participants arrive, they soon realize the only way to win is to survive life-or-death versions of children’s games. As the story unfolds, we learn more about the games, particularly the chilling fact that they’re funded by a group of enormously wealthy investors who are bored out of their minds, searching for morbid excitement.

This survival horror show is exceptionally well-performed and well-written, and it teems with suspense. It also hits on themes that are much too relevant in our world today, particularly the ever-expanding wealth gap created by capitalism and the desperation that comes with it.

Unfortunately for Squid Game fanatics, the second season isn’t coming out for who knows how long. However, many other international horror and thriller T.V. shows similarly touch on desperation, the apocalypse, and themes of anti-capitalism.

So if you loved Squid Game, try one of these four shows, all of which are readily available on Netflix.

Alice in Borderland

‎This Japanese horror series released in 2020 begins with three friends enjoying each other’s company on a busy day in Tokyo. Their carefree day ends abruptly, however. After the three exit a bathroom together, they notice almost everyone else has disappeared. The trio approaches a building and finds cell phones mysteriously placed on a table, with another participant already waiting for the games to begin. They soon discover that they’re trapped in an alternate reality, forced to play deadly games with other unlucky victims or be executed by an unknown force.

The concept of Alice in Borderland is fantastic. The games take place at many locations around Tokyo, and each game is associated with a different playing card. The suit determines what type of game the players face. Are you playing a physical game? Then you’ve drawn diamonds. Is it a game that plays with the heart? Then it’s hearts. (You probably guessed it.) The numbers of the individual cards represent the difficulty level of the game. The players get a short amount of time to prepare for the next game between each game. But if that time runs out and they haven’t played another game, they’re executed by a mysterious laser beam in the sky.

The games are similar to those in Squid Game in that winning or passing the game means surviving, and losing means dying. What’s different is that in Squid Game, all participants chose to participate. Twice. In Alice in Borderland, the participants are forced into a mysterious alternate reality that they did not choose.

The three friends struggle to stay together and make it through the games. As the first season progresses, the characters’ desperation intensifies as they aimlessly search for a way to escape the terrifying reality they find themselves trapped in.

Alice in Borderland explores the relationship between hope and fear. It relates to feelings of desperation that many experience in our world. We’re forced to live in our capitalist system, fighting for survival, clinging to hope that something better may come one day.

3%

‎The 2016 Brazilian series 3% offers a blatant dig at the worldwide wealth gap that considerably expands each year. The dystopian thriller depicts a society that keeps the rich and poor completely separate. Three percent of the population live on the Offshore, a tropical dreamland, basking in luxury. The other 97 percent live in the Inland in squalor with barely enough resources to survive.

How is this justified? Because the three percent “deserve” it. At age 20, everyone in the Inland climbs the hill, out of the filthy, impoverished urban landscape below, up to the testing facility. They go through the Process: a series of grueling challenges to see if they’re worthy of joining the three percent.

Our protagonist is Michele (Bianca Comparato), a young woman hoping to make it to the Offshore like the others. But she’s got a secret: She’s on a mission with the Cause, a rebel group aiming to destroy this stratified society from the inside out.

This series is exceptionally well done, and every character is complex and loveable. The first season is the show’s strongest, but each of the four seasons is definitely worth watching. Not only does this show comment on the worldwide wealth gap, but it’s also focused on the false belief that’s echoed in the American Dream: If you work hard enough and if you are smart enough, you will succeed.

Hellbound

‎Yeon Sang-ho, the creator of the fantastic zombie movie Train to Busan (2016), hit fans of Korean horror with Hellbound, another fantastic addition to the genre in 2021. This time, his monsters are murderous demons.

Hellbound is all about religious apocalypse. In this series, demons are real, and everybody knows it. But nobody’s sure what to do about that fact. People worldwide begin to receive death prophecies from a mystic figure that appears out of thin air, then tells them how much time they have left. Once the timer runs out, burly demons seemingly made out of muscles and supernatural smoke appear and brutally murder them.

The cult The New Truth preys off people’s fears to enter the mainstream and convince the public that the demons are killing sinners in a sort of divine retribution. I don’t want to tell you much more than that. It’s way more fun to let the show reveal its many secrets to you as you go.

The core of Hellbound is about fear and power, as well as the dangers of social media and religious extremism. In that way, Hellbound is deeply tied to themes of desperation and apocalypse. Everyone in the show is terrified of this unknown supernatural event, but the scariest thing about the show is the terrifying ways the characters behave in the face of this radical change.

Ares

‎The 2020 Dutch series Ares is a compelling series about nepotism, inheritance, and secret societies for the ultra-wealthy.

When Rosa (Jade Olieberg), a bright and ambitious medical student from a middle-class family, learns that her best friend Jacob (Tobias Kersloot) joined the mysterious and exclusive student association Ares, she’s immediately intrigued. Jacob tells Rosa to stay away because Ares isn’t for her, but she agrees to join the society, despite her friend’s ominous warnings. Rosa’s drive to succeed and elevate her status can’t be quelled, something many of us are familiar with.

Throughout its first season, Ares examines the cost that comes with privilege. Rosa rises higher through the ranks of the association. At the same time, mysterious suicides, Jacob’s increasingly strange behavior, and rumors of monsters under the floors remind the audience that something is off.

Ares is more of a slow-burn than other shows on this list, but it touches on similar themes of the struggle to gain power and influence in a crumbling society. Rosa is so focused on gaining power among her new group that she neglects to care for her mentally unwell mother. The commentary on hyperindividualism in this series offers a cutting critique of the capitalist ideology to be the best.

While these shows create alternative universes, elaborate games, and supernatural demons to help illustrate their themes, every one of them feels eerily real. Capitalism centers on competition, hierarchies, and the desperation to make it to the top of the food chain, disguised by individual choice and the promise of opportunity. Those same ideas are at the center of so much great horror, and the more people bump up against capitalism's problems and limitations, the more these horror series speak to us.

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