After the success of Squid Game almost three years ago, Netflix is hoping to bounce back into your heart with a new Korean survival drama called “The 8 Show,” which follows eight over-indebted people, all on the verge of committing suicide for escape their financial problems, and who agree to participate in a mysterious reality TV show in the hopes of winning a life-changing amount of money.
Although the premise seems simple enough at first since contestants will be paid to live next to each other in a bizarre apartment complex until the end of the show, the rules are actually a bit more complicated, even even cruel. By choosing a numbered card, each player is assigned to a completely unfurnished room on the corresponding floor. It is through the narrator of the series, known in the game as 3rd Floor (played by Ryu Jun-yeol) that we learn that players earn money by the minute and have the possibility to use these funds to buy whatever they want through an intercom, but that it will cost them 1 times the price they would pay in the outside world.
If the eight players are confined to their rooms from midnight to 8 a.m., they can gather during the day in a courtyard where there is a giant clock showing how much time they have left to play.
Upon learning that the higher the floor they chose, the bigger their room and the more money they make per minute, tensions between the upper and lower floors immediately arise. They also discover that every time they do something that the surveillance cameras placed around the complex find entertaining, time is added to the clock, allowing them to earn more money.
The plot may remind those who watched the recent Hulu documentary The Contestant of what happened to aspiring Japanese comedian Nasubi when he agreed to participate in a reality competition competition in 1998, where he had to live alone and undressed in a tiny apartment while surviving on winnings from a magazine draw.
The players of The 8 Show, designated by their floor numbers, tried to work together to save time and money, but the competition quickly turned into an increasingly violent and violent power struggle. disturbing and 8th Floor (Chun Woo-hee) ends up taking control of the group like a dictator, subjecting several of his playmates to extreme physical and psychological torture.
Based on the webtoons “Money Game” and “Pie Game” by Bae Jin-soo, The 8 Show, like Squid Game, turns out to be a thinly veiled critique of the brutal realities of capitalism, focusing on how system destroyed from top to bottom.
Director Han Jae-rim (The Face Reader, The King) explains that this eight-episode season aims to explore the depths of human nature and therefore said at a press conference held on May 10 in Seoul: “ Instead of presenting a simple dichotomy between good and evil, the series focuses more on the formation of a power dynamic that emerges during the creation of a small society »
How does The 8 Show end?
After successfully overthrowing the tyrannical rule of the 8th floor, the majority of players from the lower floors unite to implement the plan of the 1st floor (Bae Sung-woo), which is to use the billion won (approximately 740 dollars) that he earned to grab a piece of a higher level. Unfortunately, it turns out that this money just got him the instructions to change rooms since the game designers never intended to make changing floors as easy as that.
The rest of the group decides to leave the game because the 8th floor and the 6th floor (Park Hae-joon) are tied up, except that the 1st floor, desperate, threatens them with a weapon and forces them to hinder each other. others to earn more money. In order to gain more time, the 1st floor attempts a circus performance inspired by his real job as a clown, but he ends up crashing against the projector which serves as the complex’s artificial sun, falls to the ground and is overwhelmed by the flames.
The first floor is clearly in poor condition, but the others manage to free themselves and put out the fire. Realizing that the game designers won’t release them to save the 1st floor, the 1rd floor begins destroying all the cameras in the complex to end their fun. That’s when the doors to the outside finally open, but it’s too late for the 3st floor.
Desperate and depressed since leaving the apartment complex, the 3rd floor decides to spend some of his earnings to organize the 1st floor’s funeral. So he pays for a huge billboard in Seoul that reads “You are invited to the funeral on the 1st floor”, with the date and time, which brings up the 2nd floor (Lee Joo-young), the 4th floor (Lee Yul-em) and the 5th floor (Moon Jeong-Hee) to get there.
If on the one hand a flower wreath sent by the 6th floor arrives and the 5th floor shows the group an article about the 8th floor which was imprisoned for an artistic performance, the biggest mystery remains that of the 7th floor (Rich Ting ) who went to visit the family on the 1st floor to tell his wife that he was a colleague of her husband, offering her the money of a lifetime without showing up at the funeral.
We discover in a credits scene that the 7th Floor, a struggling filmmaker, has written a new script called The 8 Show based on his experience and that of his playmates. When presenting the script to a senior executive, the latter jokes saying he was on the show too, then makes fun of 7th Floor because he acts like it’s a real thing
L. After fully supporting the project, the director appears to be hinting at what could happen for the Netflix series. » Let’s achieve something big. All right ? » he said, while adding: “And then, it could even lead to a sequel…”.
And you? What do you think of this Netflix series?