Squid Game: The Challenge is weird, cruel, and utterly captivating

There are so many reasons why Squid Game: The Challenge shouldn't work.

Boasting the biggest cast and cash prize in reality TV history (456 people clamouring for USD$4.56 million), the show's logistics are enough to send even the most seasoned producer of The Bachelor into a head-spin. But perhaps even more mind-boggling is The Challenge's concept itself.

Cast your mind back – just for a second, I promise – to September 2021. Much of Australia (and the world) is in lockdown, but an ultra-violent, stylish, South Korean drama is cutting through the stale air of stasis, dread and fear.

Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk and made by Netflix, Squid Game threw us from one nightmare into another: a perverse, deeply unfair world where 456 down-and-out people opt to compete in a death match for the chance to take home 45.6 billion won ($5,400,700 AUD).

The frightening world of Squid Game is now a reality show.(Supplied: Netflix)

More sledgehammer than subtle commentary, Squid Game laid out the cruelty of late capitalism just as COVID-19 made apparent our many inequalities. A true monocultural hit, Squid Game remains Netflix's most-watched show to date.

So, another season is a no-brainer. But last year's announcement of a reality show spin-off raised eyebrows.

Wasn't the original show, in part, a parody of exploitative reality TV, taking the genre's tendency to dangle fame and money in front of the vulnerable to a bloody extreme?

The Challenge is, to some extent, the streaming giant equivalent of starting a Fight Club because Brad Pitt made it look cool; of loving the vibe (or value) or something and discarding the message.

But now that it's here, Squid Game: The Challenge doesn't cast off that slight ickiness so much as outpace it. It pushes aside the question of whether it's cheapening the original work by the sheer fact of being excellent, utterly gripping reality TV. (Besides, the killer guard plush toys might have gotten there first.)

Disbelief is all part of the challenge. (Supplied: Netflix)

A hybrid of Wipeout's ridiculous games, Big Brother's claustrophobia and Survivor's social chess, The Challenge is high-stakes, higher drama and the highest production quality out.

Even with death off the cards, The Challenge is only slightly less masochistic than Squid Game – and it's equally as intense.

It offers plenty of tragic eliminations, surprising twists and backstabbing, plus new games that would work well in the drama's upcoming second season.

Over ten episodes filmed across 16 days, The Challenge's cast live together 24/7 on a sealed recreation of Squid Game's set: a candy-cotton hellscape of pastel staircase mazes, boiler-suited guards and devilish game rooms that turn childhood classics like marbles and tug of war into treacherous, often rigged challenges.

The Challenge's prize money doesn't scratch the surface of this show's budget — the production scale is shocking.

Safe to say, things get heated immediately during the first game, Red Light, Green Light, where 456 people race across a field to the finish line while a giant killer doll's head is turned, freezing when she turns back to them – move, and they're shot dead. (In lieu of actual firing squads, eliminations are announced via a black ink pack exploding underneath each contestant's green-and-grey tracksuit. It's up to them whether to milk their "death" with a dramatic fall.)

It's absolute bloodshed. More than half of the contestants don't make it, and a majority of them don't even get a moment with the camera — missing out on the consolation prize of social media followers or momentary fame.

The Red Light, Green Light challenge was terrifying the first time around. (Supplied: Netflix)

(Allegedly, 'Red Light, Green Light' was far more taxing than shown. Back in January, Variety reported on the "inhumane" filming conditions of the first day of shooting, as a two-hour shoot spiralled into a seven-hour game without water or bathroom breaks, prompting at least three players to faint.)

Squid Game was far from fair, and The Challenge isn't either, with plenty of wrong-time wrong-place twists. It's brutal out here, as even your snoring could piss off the wrong people.

Add to that the show constantly prodding contestants with yucky food, sudden eliminations and secret missions, and the pressure only rises.

Multiple contestants are surprised when they start sobbing mid-challenge, not realising just how highly strung they are. Just like watching Squid Game, your main thought during The Challenge will probably be, 'Glad that's not me.'

The Challenge is completely unpredictable.

The show's scale means even producers are at the whim of fate, with games that are equal parts skill and chance, plus the impossible-to-predict social blocs that form when hundreds of strangers from across the globe live together.

This challenge is clearly intense. (Supplied: Netflix)

That means heroes and villains who dominate screens will be eliminated mid-storyline. No matter their sob story, unresolved rivalry or sheer charm, there's no plot armour here (or, at least, not in the first five episodes of the series, with The Challenge dropping episodes in three bursts over the next month).

Who makes up our cast? There are the beefy British bros, who perhaps got lost on the way to Love Island; a former The New York Times editor in her 60s, playing alongside her geeky son; messy drama queens; a MENSA gamer; single mothers clawing for the chance to change their lives; handsome, eccentric Italians; and a handful of TikTok microcelebrities, too — not that the show mentions it.

The challenges are based on games from the original series.(Supplied: Netflix)

While the show's flashy challenges will draw viewers in, it's the interpersonal dramas that prove most fascinating. Survivor fans will know the merits of a good "social game": the ability to balance alliances and avoid detection as a powerful player, even while winning.

Watching masters at work is awe-inspiring (and a little scary). The only thing more captivating is the contestants way out of their depth.

Ultimately, where The Challenge might have the upper hand on Squid Game is its sheer chaos.

Even at his most bloody, we could watch the original with a safe assumption that hero #456 would make it out alive. The same can't be said for any of The Challenge's cast, with some of its most lovable characters already gone.

Squid Game loves cruelty, but letting a villain take home $4.56 million? That'd elevate The Challenge to true art.

Squid Game: The Challenge is on Netflix.