K-Pop Demon Hunters - Review

I don’t write many reviews. It’s not my thing. But there’s something about Netflix’s new animated film that makes me want to run to my keyboard and tell everyone how interesting it is.

The film sets up an interesting folk conceptual world where “demons” have been antagonizing humans “for generations” by eating their souls (a la Hunson Abadeer in the Adventure Time episode It Came from the Nightosphere) and feeding them to some kind of primeval demon king named Gwi-Ma. The people of medieval Korea are then saved by the acts of three heroic women (likely using the Korean equivalent to Bardic Inspiration), who partially seal away the demonic realms with the power of pop music. This cycle of good prevailing over evil continues through the ages with each successive generation of these women’s descendants, until we arrive at the present day with HUNTR/X, a K-Pop idol band featuring Rumi (the group leader), Mira (who’s voice actor sounds suspiciously like Harley Quinn’s Lake Bell), and Zoey (who’s really into hip hop and spitting sick bars, son!).

The gang making anime face.

If this was the sum of the movie with the band getting up to the usual demon hunting shenanigans then it would already be a fairly entertaining film. Where it excels is with it’s very faithfully rendered K-Pop soundtrack (not “inspired-by,” but actually sung by real K-Pop idols) and commitment to a Korean worldview that gives the viewer a great vantage point on the ground level of contemporary Korean pop culture. The animation style is obviously 3D but with 2D elements that have become increasingly more popular in films like Puss and Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys which utilize anime tropes like using a variable shutter speed to speed up and slow down action scenes. Given the tenuous history between Korea and Japan, I doubt that the exaggerated 2D facial expressions that are being utilized in the film are truly “anime adjacent,” but it made we want to check out Korean anime nonetheless.

It wouldn’t be a kids movie without an unhinged animal familiar.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The “hook” of the film is that Rumi is half demon and raised by her mother’s former bandmate, who we are lead to assume died in her demon hunting side hustle. The typical hide-who-you-are-until-you-alienate-those-who-trust-you-the-most plot point is lead out, which would normally be a detriment to the pacing and structure of the film, but the fact that none of this is explained somehow works. (Who was Rumi’s dad? How did her mom actually die? Was the love affair a foreshadowing of a human/demon, we’re-not-so-different-you-and-I, era of human history?) While I would say it was a huge missed opportunity to not include any of the aforementioned details and, in doing so, bring some emotional and narrative complexity, the story retains it’s charm.

Demonic thirst trap: Saja Boys

The psuedo-love affair between Rumi and Jinu (a demon/enslaved soul in Gwi-Ma’s underworld), far and wide was the weakest part of the film. The intention I got from the plot point was that it was a means to humanize the demonic host and establish more context that these monsters were actually, at one time, humans. The forbidden meetings throughout the film between Rumi and Jinu also furthers the concept—I’m assuming which stems from Korean folklore—that shame is the primary means by which human souls are corrupted and gradually transformed into Demons. Personally, I felt that Rumi’s attempts to understand her heritage was undercut by the lack of her mother’s (and father’s) reoccurrence in the plot. Without picking that thread up, there’s no stakes. I was also confused by the physicality of demons, specifically Jinu and the Saja Boys (the demonic K-Pop boyband that trolls HUNTR/X throughout the film). Does Jinu possess flesh and blood as some kind of immortal planeswalker, or is his body purely spirit? Who knows? But the encounters and their significance, given Rumi, Mira, and Zoey’s chosen profession, seemingly resolve rather unceremoniously with Jinu jumping in front of Gwi-Ma’s “death ray” in the final act. This felt kind of rote and unsatisfying.

All of that said… It’s a fantastic movie. It’s funny and charming enough, but it commits to it’s premise, which so many films seem to lack these days. It’s not Citizen Kane, but it has replay value and has all the narrative hooks, however predictable, to keep you invested for 90 minutes. Also, buy the soundtrack. That shit’s fire!

My rating: B+