KPop Demon Hunters - Movie Review

The Movie: KPop Demon Hunters

The Director: Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans

The Cast: Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, May Hong, Yoo Ji-young, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, Ken Jeong, Lee Byung-hun, Lea Salonga

The Story: A world-renowned K-Pop girl group balance their lives in the spotlight with their secret identities as demon hunters.

The Rating: 8 / 10

The Review:

Over the last few years, I've been slowly getting to know the world of K-Pop, the ins and outs of modern music fandoms, and more recently, having gone all in as a full on Bloom, which means I am a big fan of Bini, a P-Pop group who has burst on to the global scene after after dominating music charts in the Philippines. That being said, it was nice to see aspects of being a fan well represented in this animated movie including biases, light sticks, and viral social media trends. Yes, I have a Bini light stick and no, I have not participated in any social media dance trends. Not yet anyway.

When I saw this movie was coming out, it definitely piqued my interest although my busy schedule kept me from seeing it as it was released on Netflix. As a matter of fact, it was released on the same day I went to Bini's BINIverse concert here in Seattle so there's no way I was going to watch it that same night. Once the movie was available on Netflix, I started to see a buzz beginning to grow as more and more of my friends and fellow music community members were raving, not just about the movie, but about all the songs as well so I didn't want to waste any more time and finally was able to sit down and have a look.

From the beginning, I was all in. The visual style perfectly suits both the K-Pop aesthetic as well as the more demonic aspects of the story and all of it somehow fit together perfectly. Having a globally famous K-Pop group also be a squad of expert demon hunters may not be the first thing that comes to mind for story ideas, but once it all comes together on screen, it makes so much sense, it's like why didn't anyone do this already and now how many more projects like this are we going to see in the future.

Just the fact that the group Twice is mentioned in the movie and sings a version of one of the songs makes me think that groups like Bini, Blackpink, Aespa, or Kaia could incorporate something like this into their multimedia plans. If you're familiar at all with Japanese Kawaii Pop group Babymetal, you'll know that they have a mystical backstory complete with a Fox God that includes a graphic novel and music videos that expand on the overall themes and I'm sure there are other examples out there so can we see more of this soon please?

Anyway, yes I absolutely enjoyed the movie. The story is great, the pacing is very streamlined, and the characters are all well represented with story arcs that show growth while also basically planting seeds for where they could go in the future. Yes, there is a sequel planned although this first installment of what I'm assuming will be a series of movies does have an actual ending and it doesn't throw any obvious cliffhangers which was really nice. The modern cinematic landscape is built around leading the audience to come back for more so it was nice to see a well written and proper ending for once.

From a technical standpoint, the animation is almost flawless. The filmmakers did a nice job of creating a very bold and colorful visual style and every pixel is just beautiful to look at which enhances the storytelling into something truly epic. There's big, intense fight scenes although nothing real graphic, just a lot of hacking away at demons that vanish into thin air as opposed to blood and guts type stuff which makes the movie appropriate for just about anyone to watch.

The songs in this movie from beginning to end are all pretty outstanding with a highlight being Golden which was co-written by Ejae, a former KPop Idol trainee who went on to write hit songs for several different groups and now, she finally has her own chance to shine. With Ejae on board as the singing voice of Rumi, we also get to hear Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna who are the singing voices of Zoey and Mira respectively. The voice acting for the three demon hunters, collectively known as Huntrix, is done by Arden Cho as Rumi, Yoo Ji-young as Zoey, and May Hong as Mira.

There's also a nice mix of stars that current generations will recognize like K-Drama star Ahn Hyo-seop and Korean American actress Ji-young Yoo (Their voices anyway) as well as others like legendary Korean action star Lee Byung-hun and actor/comedian Ken Jeong that, dare I say, older generations will appreciate. Oh, and legendary singer Lea Salonga from the Philippines is the singing voice of one of the characters. If you don't know who she is, look her up. She was the singing voice of both Jasmine and Mulan in their respective Disney animated movies and that's just a small example of her iconic career in film and on stage.

Oddly enough, I've been doing a rewatch of the Lost TV series lately so it was fun to see both Kim Yun-Jin and Daniel Dae Kim (no relation) in the cast list for this movie as the pair played a married couple on the show. I actually recognized Kim Yun-Jin's voice and had to look up the cast list to make sure my ears were hearing correctly and yes, there she was. If you haven't seen Lost, the first couple seasons is some of the best TV you will ever find although it kind of tails off from there. Anyway. The movie.

So yeah, as you can tell, I enjoyed everything about this movie and I can easily say that it is one of my favorite movies of 2025, at least so far. This is the type of movie that you can gather up the family in the living room in front of your 80" flat screen TV with lots of snacks and have a great time or you can just as easily kick back alone in your room with headphones on and enjoy it just as much. Of course, you know I'm going to recommend watching it on the largest screen possible and it makes me sad we won't ever get to see it in a theater but here we are living in the age of Netflix. That being said, just watch this movie, sing along to all the fun songs, and have fun.

Thank you for reading this review.