KPop Demon Hunters
Director: Chris Appelhans, Maggie Kang
Writer: Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan, Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
Cast: Arden Cho, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo, Ahn Hyo-seop, Yunjin Kim, Ken Jeong, Lee Byung-hun, Daniel Dae Kim
Seen on: 22./23.3.2026

Plot:
Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong) and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) are Huntrix, the biggest KPop band around. What the world doesn’t know is that they also fight demons through the power of their music. But then, the demon Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop) takes the fight to them by starting his own demonic band, the Saja Boys. As the Saja Boys go into a fierce popularity contest with HuntrX, Rumi has to fight harder than everybody else to keep her own secret.

I had heard much buzz about KPop Demon Hunters (and hadn’t actually realized that the song Golden was from the film), but it took me a little to get to it. Now that I have seen it, I can say that I enjoyed it, though I am really not the film’s demographic and didn’t quite love it as much as the people that are its demographic do.

KPop is generally not so much my thing. I’m too old (though even in my own teen years – the heydays of Western boybands and, to a lesser extent, girlbands – I never really got into those) and too critical of this kind of pop machinery. That was one of the reasons why I kind of kept my distance from the film for a while. I just assumed that it wouldn’t speak that much to me.

And I was partly right. The songs are definitely catchy, especially Golden is a bop for sure, but three weeks later, as I write this, I could barely name the other songs that featured in the film. I was also a little weirded out that the pressure behind the popstar life was either left out entirely (Huntrix don’t really have a manager, they have one dude who does everything and who very clearly works for them instead of working them which would be the more realistic portrayal) or shown to be their own personal work ethic. Nobody forces them to release songs or tour – nobody but themselves.

And it might be weird to criticize a film that is literally about singing to lock demons in hell for being unrealistic about pop music business, but it really sanitizes the entire thing to an extent that gave me the creeps.

Other things worked beautifully, though. The demonic pets, the way „anime animations“ were included in the film, the story that was not exactly revolutionary, but still got in the feels, the great voice cast – it all makes KPop Demon Hunters a very fun film even for somebody who is way too old for it like me.

Summarizing: very entertaining.