Is ‘Floor is Lava’ on Netflix Stupidly Insane or Insanely Perfect?

Netflix’s wild new game show Floor is Lava takes a classic childhood game and turns it into an insane fight for a cash prize. Instead of hopping around furniture or playground structures imagining that the ground below is a deathly river of boiling lava, the Netflix show asks teams of three to navigate ridiculous challenges to get from one side of the room to the other. Threatening them at each turn? A pool of bright red liquid, or “lava.” If a contestant falls in, they’re done. But does Floor is Lava work as a show? Is the show too stupidly insane or is Floor is Lava insanely perfect?

Floor is Lava takes the imagination-fueled “floor is lava” game from childhood and makes it real. Well, sort of. Three teams of three are tasked with trying to traverse an escape room where the challenges are more physical than mental. Points are determined by how many teammates successfully make it from one side of the room to the other, and by time after that. So if two people make it, a tie is broken by who managed the feat fastest.

The joy of Floor is Lava is steeped in schadenfreude. Many of these rooms are specifically designed with no easy path across, forcing contestants to hurl themselves across the “lava” or even slip sadly to their fate. These epic fails are made all the more laughable thanks to the campy and melodramatic way Floor is Lava treats them. Once a contestant succumbs to the crimson lake, they are treated as dead. The camera doesn’t show them struggling back up for air or leaving the room. Their spirits are dissolved into nothingness and they are remembered as martyrs by their brethren. (No, really, you hear calls to avenge their sacrifice in this show.)

Early on, as the show begins, it seems to embrace its bonkers cruelty. Like, I don’t think I’m a heartless person, but there is something funny about watching people fall into “lava” on a show they signed up to be on. There’s something cartoonish about it that defangs any concern for people’s actual bodies. Not to mention, the show interviews the teams afterwards and it’s clear everyone is alive and well. It’s all a game, folks! And we can share a hearty chuckle at their failure.

But the problem with Floor is Lava isn’t that’s it’s mean or silly or even profoundly stupid. The problem with Floor is Lava is that it doesn’t lean into these qualities enough. The show wastes time interviewing the contestants…which is not what we’re here for. We want to see people throw themselves across goofy obstacles and fall into red liquid. Who cares about their stories? Worse, the show suffers from a pacing problem. It introduces each team individually and follows their session in the room in real time. The editing could be snappier, tighter, and above all, more exciting.

Floor is Lava is exactly the mindless nonsense we gravitate towards to in the hot and heavily humid days of summer, but it could have been so much better. It needed to lean harder into its insanity and embrace its bonkers concept fully.

Watch Floor is Lava on Netflix