KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

PG and what a weird world we live in that this is something that everyone can somehow watch.  Like, I don't think it is offensive in the least.  But if I had to pick it apart, the body count in this movie filled with quasi-scary demons is almost hilariously large.  One of the things that I thought going into the movie was that the demons were bad in concept only.  Nope.  Those demons are straight up evil.  Like, a lot of people go missing after their souls are taken.  Also, like, it's kind of violent.  Still, PG.

DIRECTORS:  Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans

Yeah, I finally got around to it.  The only reason that I didn't write about this before is because I intentionally fell asleep for it the first time.  One thing that I have to come completely clean about is the fact that sometimes, I bet on whether or not I want to watch a movie.  I get really sleepy and I love naps.  I didn't know that KPop Demon Hunters was going to be such a thing.  From  my perspective, I wasn't that into K-Pop.  This was a Netflix animated movie.  I thought, "Yeah, I do like sleep and people leaving me alone."  Then everyone started losing their minds over this movie and I realized that I needed to play some catch up.  The really good news is that my family wasn't going to let me off the hook and they said that I had to sit down and watch this movie.

Not surprisingly, it was pretty great.  If you were wondering what hot take I was going to have about this movie, that's as crazy as it gets.  I think I learned more about this movie going into my first viewing than I had about any other film.  Once again, Sony, as a corporation, did something really boneheaded and sold this movie to Netflix as a means to recoup what they thought were going to be overwhelming losses.  What Sony, as a film studio, didn't realized and never realize, is that their animation department is a heavy hitter now.  They make good product.  Someone watched this as shelved it as a industry loss.  Instead, Netflix is making all the money on KPop Demon Hunters and that makes me laugh.  Now, I don't know the ins and outs of Sony Animation.  I'm really basing a lot of this on the success of KPop Demon Hunters and the Spider-Verse movies.  But these are movies with style and substance.  These are fun movies.  And not only that, but I feel like someone at Sony Animation is giving these movies a vibe that I don't see at Disney or at Dreamworks.  There's a certain look to Sony Animation movies that I'm really liking.  So as much as I'm poo-pooing Sony as a film studio, someone at Sony Animation probably needs a promotion.  (See, I can deal in nuance.)  

The thing that mostly blew me away is how much Buffy the Vampire Slayer was in this movie.  Honestly, that should be a negative for a lot of people.  But I kept watching this and pointing to my wife while mouthing "Buffy."  That seems weird to write that.  Somehow more shady than what was actually going on.  But from moment one, I felt like I had a shorthand to what the movie was about.  I'll be honest with you.  I kept hearing the term "Honmoon" and I didn't know what that was.  But "sealing the honmoon" was just "securing the Hellmouth" and I was all on board.  Seriously, in every generation was born a slayer, a girl chosen to stop the evil.  In this case, we have three of them and they sing songs on top of just fighting with Buffy powers.  I loved it.  Ji-noo is just evil Angel.  I love all this.  I don't know why this feels so comfortable to me.  Sure, KPop Demon Hunters stands on its own two feet.  I don't want to diminish anything that I saw on screen as something other than the creative work of a bunch of people who wanted to create something.  But I also think that KPop Demon Hunters hit a very special nostalgia that I haven't gotten to enjoy for a while.

There was a period of television that KPop Demon Hunters tapped into. It was the world of a mythology where archetypes battled against expectations.  When I evoke Buffy, I suppose that I'm touching on Smallville and Supernatural as well.  I'm not particularly proud to be a superfan of these things, but I am proud to say that they were shows that tickled my brain a little bit.  They were entrenched in genre, but weren't afraid to mess with genre.  I really stick with Buffy because of the notion that there's something cool about women, without commenting on it, fighting monsters and saving the day.  I'm trying to tap into my flabby knowledge of feminism here to talk a bit, especially considering that Buffy has been tainted by the hypocrisy of Joss Whedon, its creator.  But one of the things that both KPop Demon Hunters and Buffy the Vampire Slayer did right was the notion that there's nothing inherently unfeminine about girls fighting demons.  This is a film that embraces femininity and never feels the need to vocalize its own "badass" trope.  It simply is.  Part of what makes it easy is that the world --for some reasons --is completely unaware of demons.  The fans of HUNTR/X, despite having seen every single thing that they've created live, don't understand that what they're seeing is the battle between good and evil in every song.  But rather than being a copy of male machismo, HUNTR/X simply puts on an amazing show while brandishing day-glo weaponry.  I kind of am all about it.

This might be my shortest paragraph ever, but I wish that I could comment on the K-Pop elements of the movie.  I've watched a lot of Korean film, but the only Korean dramas that I've watched have been the three seasons of Squid Game.  I know my in-laws are into everything Korean.  I can't really attest to the vibes that the movie gives off as a celebration of Korean culture.  My wife says that it does an incredible job with the small stuff and I'll have to just believe her when she tells me that.

I can't stress this enough.  I did love the movie.  But there is something that kind of bothers me.  It is such a small beat, but it is one that I kind of feel is necessary.  I can't believe I'm advocating for a kids action musical to be a little bit longer, considering that I love a short runtime.  But the third act is throwing a lot at us and it misses a character beat.  There are things in this movie that are underdevoloped.  It's possible that subsequent movies will answer these questions.  Celeste confuses me. I get that she's the Giles of this movie, but I know nothing about her.  That's not even a big deal. I'm sure that other movies will touch on that.  I'm more concerned with Rumi's secret kind of getting glossed over.  Okay, I said that this was a movie that embraced some tropes that I really enjoyed.  All the Buffy stuff is great.  But the trope that I thought was a bit lazy was the "I'm keeping a secret" trope.  "I can't tell my closest friends my secret because they'll look at me differently."  I don't hate that.  It's something that we've seen in film before. That reveal has to have a certain look to it.  When Rumi is exposed as part-demon (a story beat that isn't really ever explained), there's a separation between the girls.  But there isn't really a coming to grips about how people behaved in that moment.

So much internal conflict is hinged on Rumi coming to grips with who she is.  When she is exposed, she is abandoned by the other two hunters, who would --if I'm reading the scene right --abandon the world rather than chat about what they are seeing.  I suppose I do have to give them a little bit of leeway, considering that this is a major revelation and changes their entire worldview.  But ultimately, aren't Mira and Zoey a little bit racist?  From their perspective, they saw these demons as completely soulless.  And from all the demons that they fought, they saw that they were eating souls.  (Soulless and eating souls wasn't my favorite grouping of words, but I've come too far!) But they know Rumi.  Rumi has always been a bit secretive, but has also put her life on the line to maintain the Honmoon.  I hate to be this guy, but there's a little bit of the "coming out" of Rumi that happens and Mira and Zoe fail the test.  Not only do they fail the test, but they're cool with the fallout so much that they are hypnotized by Gwi-ma.  Up to this point, they are free from Gwi-ma's influence.  Instead, they are so self-involved that they can only view themselves as victims.  That's why I don't love that there's a real chat about what happened in those moments.  Instead, all it takes is Rumi singing. She has to be the bigger person when the other two should be the ones taking the lead, especially after Zoey points her blade at Rumi.  It's just an odd brushing over what should be a major part.

But the movie is pretty darned great.  I'm sure that there's going to be more lore with subsequent movies.  As long as the film pays attention to the heart of the piece while maintaining a quirky and oddball aesthetic, I'm all here for it.