10 Horror TV Shows That Wasted Incredible Characters

Re-popularising the death game horror sub-genre for Generation Z, Squid Game took our living rooms by storm last year.

One of several major players in the recent South Korean entertainment revival in the West, Hwang Dong-hyuk's hit Netflix show introduced us to a hellish island where children's games are played for a cash-money grand prize and the losing contestants are murdered in cold blood.

Leading this theatre of death is the mysterious Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), a hooded, black-masked figure of terror who oversees a small army of overseers and attendants with a short leash and steely grip. A terrifying presence looming over the games, he is cold and calculated and mysterious to a fault – all in all, the ideal horror villain.

So the writers' decision to supplant his air of mystery with a last-minute, head-scratching reveal was, well, misguided to say the least. Squid Game's penultimate episode reveal that he is actually the brother of Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the detective who sneaks onto the island searching for his missing kin, breaks the hold the character has over the viewer and reduces him to something of a minor plot point.

Little of the now-unmasked Hwang In-ho is explored thereafter, and alongside the two-dimensional characterisation of the VIPs, all intrigue about why the games are taking place and what the motives of the players' captors may be are extinguished.