So I recently did a watch party with Satachi for KPop Demon Hunters this month. I’ve heard about it, I mean it is kind of everywhere, but never saw it until then. I was always interested in it though as I am a fan of musicals and from my understanding, KPop Demon Hunters was like an animated Disney musical except with K-Pop. I had a lot of fun doing the watch party with Satachi, but the question remains: Did KPop Demon Hunters live up to all the hype? Unfortunately for me, the answer is no. I did like the movie overall, but not to the extent that a lot of people do with raving feelings. So for this blog post, I’ll be doing a review of KPop Demon Hunters, writing about what I liked and what I feel could be improved.

What I Liked

So as I mentioned overall, I did like the movie. When I first heard about the premise, about using K-Pop to fight demons, I thought it was super wild. But honestly, this movie vibes with it really well. It helps that it is more of “music” magic that suppresses the demons rather than K-Pop specifically so there is this sense of history and legacy with the Huntr/x group being the current generation to take up that mantle. There is this sense of ancient responsibility that plays well into Rumi’s character arc. But yeah, the premise actually works really well, being popstars by day and demon hunters by night. The juggling of those responsibilities was interesting to see, and it led to some really cool K-Pop songs and fight sequences.

Rumi’s character arc is to me the central throughline of this movie. Her struggling with her identity, being a demon hunter while also being a half-demon, is really compelling. At first, she despises her half-demon heritage and tries to hide the patterns, following Celine’s advice. Part of the reason why she was so adamant to finish the Golden Honmon was that she believed it would make the patterns go away. She doesn’t see that as a part of herself and is ashamed of it. But as she progresses through the movie, as she interacts with Jinu, as show grows and begins to question what she was told about how demons are always mindlessly evil, she realizes that her trying to hide this part of herself, from her friends and the world, isn’t going to solve anything. And after it gets revealed, she is able to come to terms with this demon half of herself and accepts it as a part of herself and isn’t something to be ashamed of. This theme of accepting your authentic self is one I always like and has broad applicability to a lot of issues. It’s a classic tale of being true to and accepting of yourself but it is executed really well for the most part, and in this movie, Rumi’s arc of accepting that aspect of her as being part of her and not something to be ashamed of was really compelling.

Related to that, I also really liked her dynamic with Jinu. Jinu serves as an interesting foil and reflection to Rumi, being a former human turned demon. The parallels of Jinu also having a part of him that he is ashamed of, that being the fact that he abandoned his family for a life of wealth and comfort and that shame is what enslaves him to Gwi-Ma and he is doing Gwi-Ma’s bidding to have him erase his memories of that, well it parallels Rumi with this refusal and running away from a part of himself, even if in this instance that part is an action he did. I liked how they began to confide in each other as they relate to each other’s struggles, and Jinu helps Rumi start to see demons not as just mindless monsters, which in turn helps her accept her demon heritage. Jinu in turn has always been filled with self-loathing and selfishness, but it was Rumi’s empathy and courage to face herself that he too is able to move past his guilt in the finale, accepting it and striving to rise above it. They have a really good dynamic. I’m always a sucker for enemies-to-loves tropes so I was very pleased with how this went, though I do wish the time in which they were enemies was longer.

As a musical with K-Pop songs, there were definitely bangers. I think my favorite songs are Golden and Free. Golden works really well to highlight the Huntr/x’s emotional and personal struggles each of them have and works with the themes of the movie really well at them being done hiding. It’s the song where we get a glimpse of the struggles Mira and Zoey have as well, which is really nice. Free works really well as an emotional turning point in both Rumi’s and Jinu’s arcs where they resolve to not run, but to face their fears and struggles. This is where their parallels truly shine and a turning point in their relationship. It is a slower ballad, but one that works really well in the context of the movie to mark that turning point. They are other songs I liked of course, but those two are the ones that immediately popped into my head as being standouts.

What Could Be Improved

As I mentioned in the introduction, I personally don’t think this movie met the hype despite me liking it. To be fair, it would be extremely hard to meet the hype given how huge it blew up. But I do think there are many flaws with this movie. Most of my issues with KPop Demon Hunters revolve around one point, that being the movie is too fast paced and has this feeling of a lack of depth. The story beats go by really quickly. The Huntr/x first meets the Saja Boys and realizes they are demons, get into their battle outfits, have to be with them on a show, and then fight them in the spa, Jinu sees patterns on Rumi, Jinu helps Rumi out by hiding those patterns, that kickstarts them hanging out, that all happens in like 6 minutes. And that doesn’t even get into the climax where Rumi goes from being glad the Honmon is destroyed to her literal next appearance creating a new Honmon without anything in between, like that was a quick turnaround. While the fast pace of the movie does work at times, I do think it makes the story beats kind of shallow. Those two sequences that I just mentioned can be expanded and developed upon so much. Like we could have gotten more antagonistic development between Huntr/x and Saja boys before Rumi and Jinu start hanging out as it would make the fact that they are hanging out a lot more impactful and meaningful. And at least for the climatic sequence, there really needed to be at least one scene showing that turnaround for Rumi to really make sense.

This pacing and lack of depth really hampers a lot of aspects of this movie. For example, Rumi’s relationship with Celine is extremely unexplored and undeveloped. I think Celine has less than 30 seconds of screentime before Rumi confronts her in the climax, which makes that whole confrontation about how Celine never really loved all of Rumi and was afraid of the demon half of Rumi feel kind of hollow. If we had more development of the relationship between Celine and Rumi, Celine acting as a surrogate mother to Rumi, her giving wrong advice to Rumi to hide her demon patterns, that would make Rumi’s outburst and confrontation with Celine hit a lot harder. As it stands, it lacks the foundation to make that moment really impactful as you don’t see Celine really at all until that moment. Honestly it makes it really unexpected that Celine shows up at all as you would assume she is like one of those mentors that never shows up and is only mentioned.

Related to Celine basically being non-existent is the question of Rumi’s parents. Rumi’s mother was a previous demon hunter but married a demon to have Rumi. I thought this aspect would be explored more, like how did Rumi’s mother go through her character arc to love a demon despite demons being her enemy, and that it would play into Rumi’s own character arc of acceptance. It would have been really interesting for Rumi to explore that as part of her acceptance arc, and it would have been really interesting to see how Celine thought of one of her team members loving the enemy, which would have tied into the 3rd Act breakdown Huntr/x has when Rumi’s patterns are revealed. But Rumi’s parents are basically an afterthought, which is kind of crazy to me because it is literally why Rumi is a half-demon and thus you would think it would be important as a part of Rumi’s growth, or at the very least Rumi, who has issues with her demon-half, would question why her mother loved her demon father.

Honestly, pretty much every character besides Rumi and Jinu feels like they are lacking depth. I mentioned above that Golden was a really good song because it provided glimpses of the struggles Mira and Zoey are having, Mira having previously been a problem child and Zoey having identity issues not feeling like she belongs to either Korean or American backgrounds. Well, those glimpses are all we have and outside of said 3rd Act breakdown they essentially act as either comic relief characters or a source of drama due to Rumi keeping secrets. The movie only utilizes them in connection with Rumi and doesn’t delve into their internal characterizations at all besides Golden. And the Saja Boys basically don’t exist as characters besides Jinu.

I feel like this movie could have had Huntr/x and the Saja Boys be at odds with each other more often. I mentioned this earlier but there is like one fight scene with Huntr/x and Saja Boys before Rumi and Jinu start hanging out. I think having them have more fights would better show off their dynamics and antagonistic relationship before Rumi and Jinu start to bridge that gap. We don’t really see a lot of specific in-depth demon hunting activities from Huntr/x either. It’s mostly done in montage form. Having Huntr/x deal with specific demon incidents, like them receiving a report, them going out to investigate, figuring things out, fixing the problem, etc., would make the demon hunters part of KPop Demon Hunter feel a lot more relevant. This could easily be tied in to Saja Boys and Huntr/x being at odds with each other more, like Saja Boys concocting a scheme and Huntr/x fighting it, which would illuminate the “demon hunter” aspect of Huntr/x and develop that antagonistic relationship. Again, there is like one actual fight scene between Huntr/x and Saja Boys. All the rest of their interactions happen in the “K-Pop arena” if you will, which feels limiting. Their dynamic needed to be fleshed out more, and we needed to see more of the Huntr/x being demon hunters I feel.

One big component of KPop Demon Hunter’s themes is how demons are not mindlessly evil monsters but mainly act the way they are due to Gwi-Ma haunting them with their shame, having made a deal with the devil. This flows into Rumi’s character arc of accepting her demon heritage, and there are moments where she tries to connect with other demons. However, outside of Jinu, in the human world all the demons the Huntr/x group faces are mindless monsters to be exterminated. We really only see Jinu having human depth. Every other demon essentially is portrayed as mindless evil monsters, which really weakens the message of there being more than meets the eye with demons and questioning if they are just always evil like what Celine and the group thinks. There is a lack of exploration of other demons having been forced into deals with the devil and not always evil, and the climax drops the idea of coexistence with demons that would parallel Rumi learning to “coexist” with her demon half. I thought with the Honmon gone there would be a classic third act twist where we would go to defeat Gwi-Ma to free the demons and thus don’t need to worry about the Honmon anymore. But instead, the status quo returns with a new Honmon (don’t question it) and all the intricacies of the demons being trapped in a deal with the devil with Gwi-Ma is dropped. And Jinu, who is the only demon that is shown with depth, also dies. So it is a hard return to the status quo besides Rumi’s demon heritage being known now. It feels unfulfilling with the setup they had and seems to resolve things too nicely and surface level. The fact that the movie tries to invoke the idea that demons are not mindlessly evil but portrays all but one demon to be as such does a disservice to the movie’s themes and Rumi’s arc of accepting her demon heritage. Again, I feel this would fixed if there was time dedicated to exploring this more and changing the third act, but unfortunately we don’t get that here.

Outside of pacing and lack of depth, another area I think could be improved is on the integration of the songs into the movie’s story. A lot of the songs feel more like pop songs, and not in way where they are literally K-Pop songs, but that they don’t really integrate into the story or characters the way most good musical songs do. Good songs in musicals generally move the plot forward, whether that is revealing some internal struggle or marking an important decision or turning point. There are songs in KPop Demon Hunters that do that. Golden and Free come immediately to mind. But most songs feel disconnected from the story. Soda Pop, which by the way is by far the worst song, can literally be replaced by any standard K-Pop song and nothing would really change. And texturally, the songs in this movie sound very similar to each other. This might just be because of the K-Pop sound texture, but there wasn’t really much impactful variation of the songs outside of a few exceptions. There is this samey quality texture-wise and melodic-wise to a lot of them that I think could be improved with more diversity. I am used to musical theatre and I’m not a particularly big fan of K-Pop, so that might be more of a me thing, but this review is on my thoughts so the point still stands.

Conclusion

So, as you can see, I don’t think KPop Demon Hunters lived up to the hype. I do still like the movie overall for the qualities I mentioned, but it really needed to be expanded and developed more. Honestly, I feel like most of my issues could be solved by having this movie be a TV show instead. I think the TV show format for one season would have worked really well. There are a couple standout songs that I really liked, but a lot of it blended together for me, and Soda Pop was just bad, sorry not sorry. Overall, I would probably give this movie a 7/10 score as I think the core of the movie is really strong and compelling. It’s just unfortunate it wasn’t given the time it needed to develop to add depth, because the potential was there. There is so much that is strong about the core and the setting and the characters that just needed to be explored.

So yeah, that’s my review of KPop Demon Hunters and I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts! This was a quick turnaround from the last blog post, but I just wanted to have a place to express my thoughts on this movie as it is a pretty big phenomenon as of now. I don’t know when the next blog post will be, but I have a lot of ideas and I hope you’ll look forward to them. Thanks for reading!