REVIEW: ‘The 8 Show’ Offers A Mean Look At People

Netflix continues its webcomic adaptation run with The 8 Show (더 에이트 쇼). Directed and written by Han Jae-Rim, the series is based on the webcomic by Bae Jin-Soo named Money Game. With eight episodes fitting its title, the South Korean series is a ruthless look at capitalism and the selfishness it breeds even when people are left to their own devices.

Eight individuals trapped in a mysterious 8-story building participate in a tempting but dangerous game show where they earn money as time passes. The game begins with contestants being picked up in a limo. Then they pick a card on a stage, and then they enter an 8-floor facility with nothing but a uniform and a small rule book left for them. Don’t tamper with cameras, remain in your room during a certain time, and you must buy anything you need.

Naturally, divisions form between the haves and the have-nots as the plot reveals the differences that those random cards play into each character’s place in the game. Referring to each other only through numbers, the contestants are subjects, their humanity stripped.

We enter the story with a young man saddled with debt. Dubbed “Three” (Ryu Jun-Yeol) by the card he chose, we see the story through his eyes. From there, each character’s name continues with One (Bae Sung-Woo), Two (Lee Joo-Young), Four (Lee Yul-Eum), Five (Moon Jeong-Hee), Six (Park Hae-Joon), Seven (Park Jeong-Min), and finally, Eight (Chun Woo-Hee).

Eight people, one space, and endless critique of what we’re capable of.

Each of the characters offers something different. Whether it’s their approach to socializing, their beliefs in what makes things entertaining, or the lines they each pick to cross and hold firm, the series thrives on showcasing how the players create their own order and how that order establishes class boundaries that they can’t seem to shake once everyone learns what their place in the game means.

Some American reviewers will certainly liken The 8 Show to Squid Game, but the truth is that this series is much darker. If there is a commentary to compare it to, it’s actually the Spanish film The Platform above anything else. While Squid Game puts contestants through thrilling games arranged by the rich, The 8 Show doesn’t. Squid Game was a death game. The 8 Show isn’t. Well, unless the contestants decide it is. But more importantly, The 8 Show is meaner. Somehow, it’s much more cruel for the faceless one percent to drop desperate people into a cage and let them decide their fate. Be boring and leave; be entertaining and stay.

The 8 Show directly confronts the absurdity and cruelty of reality television by showing how aware the characters are of what makes people spend their money. Be sexy. Be violent. Humiliate those weaker than you. There is no directive, and that empty exploitation exposes the depths that the desperate go to in a world that feels like it’s crashing down, that’s somehow more brutal. People hold deep cruelty in them when selfishness is involved. But the series also highlights the aggressors, the manipulators, and the complicit. All commit violence, and all are put next to each other on the same field.

While we only get glimpses into some characters, we are given each of their depressing motivations. We learn what matters, why they’re so scared to leave, and how it causes them to either bend or break under it all. Even when the series ventures into small acts of altruism and penance, it doesn’t absolve any character from the deeds they did. Each act is something you can’t take back, and the characters, as much as the audience, are left to ask if the money on the display screen was worth it in the end.

The 8 Show is tight, concise, and one of Netflix’s best.

The 8 Show doesn’t overstay its welcome when it comes to episode length or number of episodes. It perfectly uses every single minute of run-time to deepen the story and the connections that the audience has to the game happening in front of them. With excellent character work propelled by stunning actors, the exaggerated yet simplistic set design, the choice to use one true location and solid swings toward dark fences, The 8 Show is a showstopping melancholic series.

The choice to change from a film-grained 1.19:1 aspect ratio to the clean aesthetic you would expect helps the series distinguish past trauma from current reality. As each character’s story gets expanded, the shift in life, as depicted by the ratio shift, is effective. It changes how we think about them, as their past colors their awful present.

Often an uncomfortable watch, The 8 Show explores the nooks and crannies of the soul. It exposes the ways that altruism erodes and selfishness prevails. It takes desperate people and cultivates them into their worst parts, where fear takes hold, and vulnerabilities transform into clawing at shreds of survival. Every time characters are given hope, it’s immediately crushed into a fine powder. There are no good feelings to be had about people in the series, and each episode cuts deeper as kindness erodes further and further.

The 8 Show is one of the best-limited series on Netflix. It ends with finality and pays off every narrative choice made along the way. This isn’t about action or even the actual violence we see; it’s about people breaking and tearing down each other because of the ways capitalism and archaic ideas of success and worthiness have been ingrained in them. It’s humanity unmasked.

The 8 Show is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.