tek's rating:

KPop Demon Hunters (PG), on Netflix
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Caution: spoilers.

When I first heard of this movie, I thought the premise sounded a bit silly, but potentially kind of fun. When I actually watched the movie, I found it to be kind of amazing. The music is great, the animation is really good, I like the characters, and I think the story is awesome, with fun humor and compelling drama.

For many generations, demons would steal the souls of humans to feed to their leader, Gwi-Ma. But eventually, a trio of women came together to fight the demons using songs. Together with energy from their fans' souls or whatever, they created a magical barrier called the Honmoon, to protect the human world from the demon world. Since then, there has been a new trio of singers/demon hunters born into each generation, to maintain the Honmoon through song. In the present, the trio are K-pop singers (though their songs are in English) in a group called Huntrix (stylized as HUNTR/X). The group includes Rumi, Mira, and Zoey. (I think Zoey is my favorite, but they're all good characters, and Rumi is the main protagonist of the story.) They receive some guidance from one of the previous generation's demon hunters, Celine (Yunjin Kim), who also raised Rumi after her parents died. There's a secret about Rumi that only Celine knows, which I don't want to spoil, even though it's hard to say too much about the plot without spoiling it. I should also mention Huntrix has a manager named Bobby (Ken Jeong), who has no idea they're demon hunters.

A demon named Jinu forms a boy band of demons, called Saja Boys, who all disguise themselves as humans. They quickly become very popular, siphoning fans away from Huntrix, draining their fans' energy and thereby weakening the Honmoon. Huntrix realize the Saja Boys are demons, but of course they can't reveal the truth to their fans, who don't know that demons even exist. Meanwhile, Rumi struggles with the secret that she's keeping from her friends, and it causes her to have trouble singing. Zoey takes her to a homeopathic healer named Han (Daniel Dae Kim), but his "cure" doesn't work. Later, when Jinu discovers Rumi's secret, and tells her about his own past, the two of them slowly begin to trust each other. Rumi can't tell her friends about this, but when she expresses dissatisfaction with the hateful lyrics of their new song, they begin to suspect something's wrong with her. Meanwhile, Gwi-Ma learns that Jinu is planning on helping Huntrix, and threatens Jinu into turning against Rumi. Mira and Zoey eventually learn Rumi's secret, which results in the band breaking up.

But of course they do eventually get back together and save the world from Gwi-Ma and a horde of demons, after the Saja Boys nearly destroy the Honmoon so that the demons were, for awhile, free once more to roam the Earth stealing souls. And... I'm leaving out plenty of details, but that's basically the story. I'm afraid I can't do it justice without spoiling Rumi's secret, but the whole thing really is quite dramatic and moving, and a ton of fun. So, if you like both K-pop and stories about demon hunting, but like me, it never occurred to you that it would be cool to combine the two things, this movie proves the concept can work really well. I highly recommend it.


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