Have you watched Squid Game yet?
The recent South Korean survival drama has quickly broken records to become one of Netflix’s most watched shows. Its plot follows hundreds of debt-ridden characters who are invited to play a deadly game with a chance to win a large sum of cash.
Upon hearing the premise, many will recall the Hollywood film series Hunger Games. But did you know there are many more films with premises that are similar to the series?
Below are 12 from around the world we’ve picked (though we would certainly not recommend them for young children)!
1. Battle Royale
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act. —Japan, 2000 (Director: Kinji Fukasaku)
2. High-Rise
The infrastructure of a secluded luxury tower block begins to fail and tensions between residents become apparent, with the building soon descending into chaos. —UK, 2015 (Ben Wheatley)
3. Cube
Six complete strangers with widely varying personalities are involuntarily placed in an endless maze containing deadly traps. —Canada, 1997 (Director: Vincenzo Natali)
4. Snowpiercer
In a future where a failed climate-change experiment has killed all life except for the lucky few who boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe, a new class system emerges. —South Korea, 2013 (Director: Bong Joon-ho)
5. Luck
An underworld kingpin recruits people endowed with 'Luck' from across the globe to take part in a series of challenges designed to test their 'Luck' factor, as gamblers around the world bet on them. —India, 2009 (Director: Soham Shah)
6. As the Gods Will
A group of high school students are forced to play a game of death without knowing who, why or how. —Japan, 2014 (Director: Takashi Miike)
7. The Belko Experiment
In a twisted social experiment, eighty Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogotá, Colombia, and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company's intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed. —US, 2016 (Director: Greg McLean)
8. Nerve
A high school senior finds herself immersed in an online game of truth or dare, where her every move starts to become manipulated by an anonymous community of "watchers." —US, 2016 (Directors: Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman)
9. The Purge
A wealthy family is held hostage for harboring the target of a murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12-hour period in which any and all crime is legal. —US, 2013 (Director: James DeMonaco)
10. Tag
A girl's life cascades into chaos as everyone around her suffers a gruesome fate while she becomes less certain of who she is and her once-once normal. —Japan, 2015 (Director: Sion Sono)
11. The Game
After a wealthy San Francisco banker is given an opportunity to participate in a mysterious game, his life is turned upside down as he begins to question if it might really be a concealed conspiracy to destroy him. —US, 1997 (Director: David Fincher)
12. The Hunger Games
Katniss Everdeen voluntarily takes her younger sister's place in the Hunger Games: a televised competition in which two teenagers from each of the twelve Districts of Panem are chosen at random to fight to the death. —US, 2012 (Director: Gary Ross)