K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) Review

https://youtu.be/AzCAwdp1uIQ?si=MjDrtLo0hcVpr7Ht

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

The best way to balance right and wrong is being able to be yourself.


PLOT


2025’s K-Pop Demon Hunters takes place in a dystopia where the evil Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) has been kept a bay for generations as many women, always in groups of three, have since used music to create a Honmoon barrier to prevent demons from ever passing through. If strong enough to evolve into the Golden Honmoon, it’ll seal demons away for good. Set in the 21st century, the new trio are Rumi (Arden Cho/Ejay), Mira (May Hong/Audrey Nuna) & Zoey (Ji-young Yoo/Rei Ami), who are still hunting demons under the K-pop band ‘Huntrix’, managed by their agent Bobby (Ken Jeong). Unbeknownst to the latter two, Rumi’s half demon on her father’s side and had been raised by former hunter Celine (Yunjin Kim/Lea Solanga) after her mother died. With demonic patterns slowly spreading over her skin, starting with her arm, Rumi pushes for a new single rather than have her voice recover in order to complete the Golden Honmoon sooner. As the girls gain financial success from the single ‘Golden’, Gwi-ma is pitched by human turned demon Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop/Andrew Choi) to form a boy band, Saja Boys, in order to distract Huntrix enough to weaken Honmoon. Jinu pitches this idea in exchange of erasing past memories. Both groups would fight each other upon first encounter and Jinu would be the first to notice Rumi’s secret, but would choose to not expose her. With Saja Boys getting popular as planned, Huntrix rushes to make a rebuttal track out of ‘Takedown’, but Rumi ends up disliking the negativity towards demons that she ends up feeling so strained with Mira & Zoey to the point of talking to Jinu behind their backs. She offers to let him stay in the human world if he can help sabotage Saja Boys. In return, he’s explained to have felt past inner torment hearing voices of the family he lost and talking to her has led to him feeling a bit healed. When seeing Gwi-ma again, he reminds him he became a demon after abandoning his family for wealth and will amp the inner voices if he goes back on the deal. By the time of the Idol Awards, Huntrix agrees to perform ‘Golden’ due to the tension they have over ‘Takedown’. This gives enough of an opportunity for multiple demons to separate them for an attack. The girls overcome the wave, but Mira & Zoey would be stunned to discover Rumi’s secrets. As that happens, Gwi-Ma is strong enough to pass through and with Saja Boys’ assist does he trance the city to collect many souls. Rumi feels regret in not being honest with her only friends that she wishes she were dead, but that feeling goes away upon realizing Celine never fully accepted her the way she thought. However, she still goes out to set things right by singing an improvised song of self acceptance, “What it Sounds Like”, which becomes effective enough to free Mira & Zoey from the trance. As Huntrix fight together again against Saja Boys, Jinu sacrifices himself against Gwi-Ma, giving Rumi his energy to finish the fight. This helps Huntrix defeat all the demons and reseal them away from a new rainbow-ed Honmoon, and the film ends with the trio protagonists celebrating an epic victory.


THOUGHTS


This is one of those movies that put you into what feels like uncharted territory and makes you appreciate every damn but if it. I’m picky with asian animation like anime and don’t even listen to K-pop music the way others do, yet I don’t regret watching this Netflix movie with my sisters because this was a certified banger. This is not straight up anime in vein to Sailor Moon or One Piece, but the computer animation makes it pretty close to its spirit because every second is gorgeous due to all the various colors that emerge. From fight to song vice versa, to various costumes and creatures throughout, it’s hard to not be stunned. It’s hard to not feel hypnotized when seeing the derpy tiger. Like past animated flicks, such as most of Walt Disney’s catalog for example, the music blends into the narrative that it just wouldn’t work without it and each song is able to bring everything together so fluently. Every-time I hear the opening track of “How it’s Done”, I’m pumped because that’s an ideal song of confidence I can’t get enough of, which is why it’s also impressive to hear “Takedown” as a mean diss track version of it. When it comes to listening to both “What it Sounds Like” and the Oscar winning hit “Golden”, they are most moving for being metaphors of self acceptance & embracing true identity in order to overcome fear, otherwise staying in the dark will result in permanent misery. This is the case when we follow Rumi because she’s a character who never asked for her predicament and yet does her best in doing what she was taught for the greater good, to the point of becoming a workaholic like past celebrities. Once her truth slowly emerges, she comes to accept she doesn’t need to cater to someone’s ideals. I’m sure Celine always meant well in wanting to play it both ways as she raised her, but her decision to not tell anyone she’s half demon is where things were bound to get problematic. She chose fear over love and that ruined her purpose immediately. Keeping a secret from close friends is always go awry because while Mira may be bluntly short-fused & Zoey is the most bubbly, they were mostly loyal as I believe they would’ve came up with some kind of solution sooner. Before things blew up enough to spark a much needed resolution, it became the craziest coincidence Rumi would find comfort speaking to who is supposed to be the enemy. Jinu is just as interesting of a character because while originating from greed that would leave a smile on Gwi-Ma if he had a face, he is someone who’s lived to regret his mistake after all the time that has passed. Through the song “Free”, he and Rumi quickly click because they relate to vulnerability that others wouldn’t be capable of understanding.  They both just wanted to live freely, but only one was gonna that opportunity between the two. The longer Jinu had a taste of it when making catchy seductive songs like “Soda Pop”, the more he knew he need a second chance as much as he thought. Even though his secret is worse than Rumi’s, his sacrifice won’t be in vein because now Rumi can now live without fear and the stronger Honmoon is gonna do wonders for the human world until a sequel establishes new problems. This movie is a goddamn delight, but even fun stuff like this have some confusing moments that are hard to ignore. Like it is one thing to question how do women get chosen to become trained to hunt demons and have great singing, but I’m surprised Bobby remained so clueless about the demon they killed onstage. I mean it wouldn’t have been a thing for the girls to tell him their secret since it never came off like he would ever betray them. That bothers me more than him texting the girls he was come to the apartment unannounced which is just a bad habit on his end. I then wonder why would Rumi allow anyone to design sleeveless costumes? If she doesn’t want costume designers to know her secret, I would have totally gotten sleeved shirts to already go with the jackets no matter what. And if Jinu can teleport, then it’s obvious the past demons are weak as hell for not thinking of that especially since they wait til the Idol Awards to mimic Huntrix’s choreography enough to trick Rumi when they could’ve thought of that way before Jinu came up with the idea of a boy band. Lastly, I don’t think there’s any point for Gwi-Ma to allow Rumi to sing one more time when that is in fact his and every demon’s weakness after all this time. Ignore these issues, then you can still appreciate K-Pop Demon Hunters as a beautiful animated film that is able to brave in what needs to be said while still being fun throughout, warning the Animated Feature Oscar in the process. If you have Netflix and dig animation, check this out soon.