Okay, so you’re done with Squid Game—what’s next? The rumored date for Squid Game Season 3 is June 27, 2025; that’s a long time for now and it’s also just a rumor. It could just as well be in Halloween.
You should consider diving into movies in the battle royale genre, which are defined by high-stakes survival games and dramatic personal conflicts, just like Squid Game. Here are some of the best movies in that genre.
Battle Royale (2000) is the film that set the standard in the battle royale subgenre, but that’s not the only reason it tops this list. It’s the best battle royale movie because of its perfect balance of wild action, humor, and heart (similar to Squid Game in that way). The film focuses on 42 junior-high students who unwillingly become part of the “BR Act,” an act meant to curb the increasing problem of violence in the country’s youth. The students of a single class (plus two transfer students) are kidnapped, strapped with explosive collars, handed weapons of varying quality, and sent out on a remote island to kill each other. If more than one person is alive after three days, then everyone dies. Blending violent action with the already emotionally-charged environment of high school is brilliantly effective.
The Belko Experiment (2016) is an incredibly fun and violent battle royale set within a locked-down office building. The story takes place in Colombia where an American company, Belko Industries, has a multi-story office staffed by mostly American employees. Part of the employees’ initiation into the company includes, unknown to them, the implantation of an explosive tracking device. One day, a voice comes over the building’s intercom instructing everyone to begin killing their coworkers. The work day gets progressively worse, building up to a crazy barrage of violence and gore as the voice’s instructions eventually let everyone know that only one person will be set free. Fans of James Gunn’s films will find plenty to love here, including a few familiar faces from some of Gunn’s other films.
Signal 100 features a unique spin on the battle royale format. Instead of focusing on people actively killing other people, the best way to survive is to trick other people into killing themselves. A group of high-school students attending a special class in an empty school are hypnotized by their teacher. The process instills 100 different “signals” in the students’ minds where, if they perform an action associated with one of the signals, the student is compelled to immediately commit suicide. For example, being late for class and using cell phones are two of the signals, resulting in multiple suicides right away. Only the last living student will have their hypnosis removed, leading to deadly scheming by a number of the students. Signal 100 is a lot of fun, and it is definitely recommended for fans of Battle Royale.
Mean Guns (1997) is one of the few battle-royale-style movies that predates Battle Royale (2000). Ice-T plays a gangster named Vincent Moon. Moon gathers a group of 100 people in an empty prison, all of who have gotten on the bad side of Moon’s criminal organization. Guns and ammunition are dumped into the middle of the group, and they are all given six hours to kill each other. If there are three or fewer survivors after six hours, then they’ll get to split $10 million. Otherwise, everyone dies. Though the game allows up to three people the chance to survive instead of just one, its overall tone still qualifies it as a fun precursor to Battle Royale.
Of any actor to ever appear in a battle royale movie, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin easily had the most prior knowledge of battle royales thanks to his many years as a pro wrestler. In The Condemned (2007), Austin stars as Jack, a prisoner who is put on an island with nine other convicts. Each prisoner has a bomb strapped to their ankle with a 30-hour countdown timer, and they are told that they can earn their freedom by being the last person alive before the bombs detonate. The Condemned is an action movie through and through, and it is a great showcase for the talents of Steve Austin outside of a wrestling ring.
The game of murder in The 10th Victim (1965) is formatted slightly differently than the other movies in this list, but it has enough ties to the battle royale subgenre to warrant its inclusion here. In the near future, a form of deadly entertainment, “The Big Hunt,” is created to keep people’s warlike tendencies in check. “The Big Hunt” is a competition where people are put into a series of one-on-one battles to the death. Competitors alternate between being a hunter and a victim, with hunters receiving complete knowledge of the victim, and victims knowing nothing about who the hunter is. Anyone who survives ten hunts receives millions of dollars and can retire with fame and fortune. Though the action in The 10th Victim isn’t as wild as it is in many other films of its kind, the setup and execution still feels a lot like future movies in the genre including Battle Royale (2000) and The Hunger Games (2012).
The Tournament (2009) stars Kelly Hu, Ving Rhames, and Robert Carlyle in a gathering of the world’s most dangerous killers. Every few years, a group of mega-wealthy individuals put on “The Tournament” where combatants volunteer for a free-for-all battle to the death contained within a city. Each competitor has an explosive tracker implanted in their body, and if more than one person is alive after 24 hours, all the trackers explode. Story lines in this particular tournament involve a previous winner who has returned to find his wife’s killer, and a local priest who mistakenly ingests the tracker of one of the competitors. The Tournament has some great action sequences, and overall it’s a super-fun low-budget flick.
