At the beginning of the recent Merchant Ivory discussion episode of the main podcast, most of the crew expressed great admiration for the recent Netflix original KPop Demon Hunters, and I must now add my own voice to that chorus. I resisted for as long as I could, but after the overwhelming number of Halloween costumes I saw and heard about this year, I was finally curious enough to give it a shot, and it’s quite cute. 

HUNTR/X is an all-girl K-pop trio who also happen to be demon slayers, with their musical talent being an integral part of their spirit-busting arsenal. For generations, different trios of women have spent their lives fighting the infernal forces while also building and reinforcing the “Hanmoon,” a kind of psychic forcefield that keeps the armies of evil from entering our world. The most recent incarnation is set to complete/permanently reinforce the Hanmoon, visually represented by it turning golden, which will permanently sever the demon ruler Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) and his minions from our realm and prevent his influence from spreading. HUNTR/X’s lead singer is Rumi (Arden Cho!), an orphan whose mother was a demon hunter/musical idol and who was raised by her mother’s bandmate/co-slayer Celine (Yunjin Kim). Rounding out the trio are Mira, the snarky dancer who is the black sheep of her wealthy family, and Zoey, a Korean-American lyricist and rapper from Burbank; both were also trained by Celine in demon slaying/pop idol branding. 

In the underworld, Gwi-Ma accepts the proposal of an underling named Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop) to think outside the box and, instead of sending wave after wave of minions against HUNTR/X, interfere with the psychic power that they get from their fans to weaken the Hanmoon instead. To that end, Juni appears in our realm, accompanied by four other disguised demons, as the newest boy band, Saja. Like any perfectly crafted group of that genre, each member is designed to appeal to a certain demographic: there’s the innocent and adorable Baby Saja; the pink-haired pretty boy Romance Saja; the aptly named Mystery Saja whose hair obscures almost his entire face; and Abby, whose personality is … having abs (he’s my favorite). Just as HUNTR/X is poised to release their new single, “Golden,” which will solidify their idol status and let them turn the Hanmoon gold, Saja immediately starts to overtake HUNTR/X in popularity, undermining the power needed to complete the ritual. Worse still, unbeknownst to her bandmates, Rumi is finding it increasingly difficult to hide her “patterns,” the telltale markings that betray her heritage as the child of a demon and a hunter, which Celine has forced her to keep hidden for her entire life. Jinu notices this in their first fight, and with a budding potential romance between them, now she has two secrets to keep. And she’s losing her voice! 

KPop Demon Hunters has been an enormous success, and is currently sitting at the top of Netflix’s most viewed original film list. It’s easy to see why; this is an easily-digestible animated musical with a distinctive style and catchy music. It’s clearly for children but is a bit of a throwback among kiddoe media in that it understands that its target demographic is not going to be its only audience, and thus makes the effort to include humor that appeals to the whole family, not just its smallest members who need to be babysat by a screen for 90 minutes. Other than this summer’s Freakier Friday (which was also PG), I’m hard pressed to remember the last time a movie that was made for a primarily young audience bothered to create something that older siblings and parents might enjoy, rather than merely tolerate. This kind of pop music has never really been my thing, I’m afraid, and I don’t really see that changing; the film’s Big Song “Golden” recently played at my gym and I would not have known it from any of the other pop music that passes by me in the stream if it hadn’t been pointed out to me. That’s not a mark against the film at all, just an observation that I’m a tertiary demographic here, and the music was consistently good throughout, even if my comparatively elderly ears couldn’t quite discern what I was hearing some of the time. (I first heard the lyric “Now I’m shinin’ like I’m born to be” as “Now I’m shining like a butterbean,” which I knew could not be correct but got stuck in my head.) Even more than that, I really appreciated that the film allowed itself to go a little hard on the violence and horror elements, and this is a movie that I could see being an effective introduction to the thrill of cinematic fright for a younger audience, of the kind that I was fortunate enough to benefit from.

An urban fantasy musical is a great idea, and I can’t imagine a better execution of it than this film, especially in its ineffable lightheartedness that manages to keep the film in the family-friendly realm despite some of the more challenging subject matter. As someone with no expertise in this genre, my two main points of comparison are admittedly very Western™, but I kept thinking of Josie and the Pussycats and Buffy. The similarities between HUNTR/X and the Pussycats are mostly visual, with them being a musical trio whose lounging around in their Avengers-style penthouse mirrors the royal treatment that the ‘Cats get in their film. When it comes to Buffy, I can’t help but think about that first season storyline—Buffy/Rumi falls for a much older demon with a soul (Angel/Jinu) and has to keep this from her excitable, borderline autistic-coded (Willow/Zoey) and snarky (Xander/Mira, although Mira is way cooler) friends, all while keeping secrets from her mother/mentor. There’s also the sixth season, where a resurrected Buffy fears that she’s “come back wrong” and is now part demon, and she covertly starts seeing Spike while keeping both her relationship and her condition from her friends. If you’re starting to worry that I’m going to say something negative about this, fret not; a comparison to Buffy is a high honor in my home, and I loved seeing the echoes. I was also delighted to hear Arden Cho’s voice, as I’ve been a fan of hers since her Teen Wolf days and I’m excited for the career possibilities that this success will bring her.

I didn’t touch much on the themes of the piece, but suffice it to say that they’re a bit deeper than the standard fare. It’s not a recent trend for animated and otherwise child-oriented film to be about self-acceptance, but even something like the recent Nimona (which I quite liked) has a tendency to have a slight twinge of the performative, while the complexities of self-identity and prejudices are handled with a little more nuance here. The exhilarating action sequences and the peppy music break the film up so much that it feels like you’re at a concert even when the film is giving you something to chew on, narratively, and I appreciate that. It’s not going to be for everyone, but it’s not a bad choice for a fun movie night.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond