<i>KPop Demon Hunters</i> Understands the Joyous Power of Music

I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about KPop Demon Hunters. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because I was, and I didn’t know if I needed to temper my expectations. You see, I am a K-pop fan. A pretty serious one. We’re talking “flew 1000 miles to see Stray Kids in concert and would do it again in a heartbeat” serious. Or “would happily give an hour-long lecture with PowerPoint arguing that SHINee’s ‘Sherlock (Clue + Note)’ is a perfect song.” Or “wrote a long essay here on the site about storytelling and K-pop videos.” Even “knows the names of many idols’ pets” serious. That kind of serious.

I think everybody who has ever been deep in a fandom for a thing—any fandom, any thing—understands the wariness that comes along with somebody making a mainstream movie about their thing. It’s always apparent when such projects are made by somebody who wants the devoted fandom audience but isn’t interested in, and hasn’t bother to find out, why that audience exists in the first place. And there are extra layers of wariness when the subject matter is largely associated with teenage girls. Pop culture in general is still not all that great at understanding and portraying things that girls and young women love.

I will admit my wariness had been eased considerably by the time I watched the film, because as soon as it came out both K-pop fans andidols began reacting favorably to it. (Idols have even begun covering the songs from the movie, which delights me.) So I went in thinking I would at least not hate it. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a lot, because KPop Demon Hunters is very entertaining and quite charming, with gorgeous animation, a fantastic soundtrack, some cool elements of Korean folklore, and genuinely heartfelt themes.

Don’t worry: I’m not going to spoil the movie in this review. I’m just going to talk a bit about the premise and where it came from.

KPop Demon Hunters is directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans. Kang, who was born in Seoul before later moving to Canada, wanted to tell a story that mixed traditional Korean folklore into modern Korean culture. She was particularly interested in exploring the role of Korean shamans (무당, or mudang), practitioners of a diverse and non-organized Korean folk religion; the shamans are often women and are traditionally called on to protect people and communities from harm using rituals that involve storytelling, singing, and dancing. That was the initial seed of the story, but of course it evolved well beyond that, taking those elements of performance and protection and wrapping them into a modern superhero formula.

The K-pop element of the story came in later. Kang is an self-professed K-pop fan from back in the ’90s, when the industry and its associated musical style was brand new. It was in 1992 that Seo Taiji and Boys dropped their debut “I Know” and shook up the Korean music landscape by throwing hip-hop, dance pop, R&B, and popular Korean ballad elements into a blender and coming out with a megahit. K-pop has exploded in global popularity since then, and it was that global mass appeal that gave Kang and Appelhans the idea of using K-pop as their way of slotting a supernatural superhero tale into modern Korean culture. Appelhans has specifically talked about how online concerts presented by K-pop megastars BTS during the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated how a shared love of music could break through the anxiety and isolation of lengthy lockdowns.

A quick aside for the sake of clarity: “K-pop” doesn’t refer to “pop” music in quite the same way the designation is used in the US and UK music industries. If your only exposure to K-pop is PSY’s “Gangam Style” or BTS’s “Dynamite,” it might not be apparent that K-pop can be anything from bright bubblegum pop to angry aggressive rap, from smooth R&B to psychedelic EDM, from deep house to moody alt rock to gospel to jazz, not to mention the many things that nobody knows how to describe, often with several genres mixed together by the same group on the same album. Or in the same song.

The blending of musical genres is a core component of K-pop, but more generally the term refers a music industry with a particular structure, one that has taken elements from Motown, Japanese idol culture, and the American boy bands of the ’90s. Companies choose and train performers to form groups specializing in both music and dance, and the groups are presented and tightly managed in a way that maintains a certain wholesome persona while competing with each other to maximize the engagement and loyalty of fans. The performances are incredibly theatrical, new music is released and new groups are debuted at a blisteringly fast rate, there are numerous weekly music shows with fan-voted winners, and it’s a young enough industry that active artists will talk about how rare it is to have peers with significant career longevity.

I bring this up because the fast-paced, competitive nature of the K-pop industry provides some context to the plot of KPop Demon Hunters. The film tells the story of the three-member girl group Huntr/x, consisting of Rumi (voiced by Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong), and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo). They have been trained to not just churn out high-energy bops but to kill demons in their spare time; they are the most recent trio of musical demon slayers in a long line of musical demon slayers. There is essentially no space between their idol roles and their hunter roles. They’ve been taught to hide all their flaws and show only the brightest parts of their personalities, and to prioritize the happiness of the masses above everything.

When the film begins, the young women of Huntr/x are excelling at both of their jobs. They are on top of the world as music stars, and they are getting closer to using the power of their music to banish demons forever by strengthening the Honmoon, which in the film is the mystical barrier between the living world and the afterlife.

The film very efficiently introduces Huntr/x, establishes both their on-stage personas and off-stage personalities quickly, explains their status in the music and demon-hunting worlds, and provides a fight scene to showcase exactly what sort of superheroes they are. The action is clean and bright, the world colorful, and the characters have wonderfully unique and expressive faces.

I know at this point, living as we are in a post-Into the Spider-Verse world, it would be more surprising if animation out of Sony Pictures Animation wasn’t great. But it’s still worth reiterating: the animation is wonderful. It’s so, so good, managing to feel warm and welcoming while also asserting a unique style. The directors have spoken about how they made a point of studying a wide variety of K-pop performances, as well as pushing the animation to mimic the look of both Korean dramas and K-pop photoshoots and concerts.

And it works. The Huntr/x concert that opens the film looks and feels exactly like a K-pop concert of that magnitude. That is, in fact, precisely what it’s like to be in a stadium with 50,000 of your fellow fans, when every one of you is there because you love the same thing. All the details are right: the light sticks, the signs, the outfits, the array of families and friend groups in the audience, the giddy enthusiasm with which strangers chatter happily about their favorite group members and songs. It feels like a party before the show starts—and after the show starts, the crowd will sing every word to every song.

It’s a great way to start the film, because even though we know we’re in a fantasy world, so we know the rules are different, we still need to see the positive power Huntr/x has in order to believe they can save the world with their music.

Of course it won’t be that easy. Immediately after their triumphant concert, right as they’re about to reach the apex of both their music careers and their superhero mission, things get complicated. Rumi is struggling with some secrets she’s been keeping from the other members, but a much bigger problem appears out of nowhere in the form of a rival boy group who call themselves Saja Boys. (“Saja” means “lion” but is also a reference to Jeoseung Saja, the beings from Korean folklore who escort souls to the afterlife. Grim reapers, essentially.)

The Saja Boys are demons who want to steal souls by stealing their fans’ attention, and their debut single “Soda Pop” is the first step of their cunning demonic incursion on Earth. I mean, it’s no “Replay,” but I suppose it’s catchy enough for a boy group debut, and it launches the Saja Boys to instant success. That song, like all the songs in the film, was written for the movie by actual K-pop producers, who in the real world are probably not demons, but I know too much about the shadiness of the K-pop industry to confidently fact-check that assumption.

The movie knows this is an inherently absurd premise, and it knows that we know, but it uses that to its benefit. For the most part it balances the inherent absurdity of the premise with the gravity of the threat pretty well, although I would have like to see a bit more impact resulting from the demons’ actions. The rivalry between the two groups plays out across two kinds of battlefields: with weapons and violence in the shadows, and with music and constant promotion in the public eye. That second battlefield includes all of the stuff that defines the weird world of K-pop: the awkward variety appearances, the fan meetings, the fan-voted music shows, the viral internet dance trends, the spicy food challenges, and of course the ubiquitous ramyeon.

While all this fighting is going on, Rumi slowly gets to know the Saja Boys’ leader, Jinu. He’s the one who came up with the idea of stealing souls via K-pop, and he’s also the only one of the demons with any personality. I know that’s partly by design, as the individual Saja Boys are meant to be archetypal personas that K-pop group members are often awkwardly shoved into, but that’s one aspect where the movie falls a bit flat. It could have done more with that element of real-versus-stage personas, especially in its side characters.

If Jinu has a personality and private goals and a tragic backstory, it stands to reason that other demon boys might as well, but we don’t ever see that. We do, however, get to see quite a lot of Jinu’s adorable pets, who are a reference to the jakhodo style of Korean folk paintings that depict tigers and magpies together.

I, for one, wanted to know exactly how they trained for their evil demonic plan. Did Jinu prepare them for the realities of a K-pop battleground by pulling up a playlist on Underworld Spotify and playing “Aju Nice” fifty times in a row? Did they drill in the demonic arts of jumping and popping? Was there a mood board somewhere with pictures and lyrics from “Mirotic” pinned on it? I have questions.

I also feel like the story could have held a few more twists and turns, even within the scope of 100 minutes; the premise and the fantastical world are complex enough that it could handle a bit more plot complexity, and some of the darker elements are underexplored. But that’s a minor complaint. The movie has a satisfying ending—while also leaving room for a potential sequel—and I enjoyed it all the way through.

What I liked most, I think, is that the movie gets it. It understands what it feels like to be a K-pop fan. It treats its subject matter with a warm fondness that makes it clear the filmmakers appreciate why the fans love what they love. The film embraces the silliness of the premise, but it never looks down on fans for loving something that is often quite ridiculous, or for being fickle and opinionated as they cheerfully, raucously rush to embrace a flashy new thing. (I promise you that we know K-pop is often ridiculous. That’s part of its appeal!) It understands all of the excitement and insanity and emotion and whimsy. It understands that there is genuine connection to be found in singing and dancing and cheering together.

It’s about music, after all, and music is meant to be shared and loved.