Heeeeey it’s me, Unshaved Mouse, your favourite writer/blogger who overpromises because he’s terrified of disappointing people and ends up taking on WAAAAY too many writing projects and then spirals and completely burns out!
So, as you all know I’m currently preparing for my first North American book tour at the end of this month while also facing a huge quivering mass of deadlines so this review is going to be shorter than the queues for Melania.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I do have things to say about this movie.
Firstly, it was really fun spotting songs that I’ve been hearing everywhere and realising that this where they came from. As to the music…
Look, I know the following facts about K-Pop:
- It’s pop.
- It’s from Korea.
- Its fans are feared more than the mighty Bey Hive or even the dreaded Swifties.
Not my genre. But, I enjoyed these songs overall.
Maybe the reason I vibed with this movie is that it feels like a concept that would have been right at home when I was growing up. The airways were clogged with titles that read like a game of Madlibs at a magic mushroom party. Our ninjas were turtles. Our cows were cowboys. Our mice were bikers and from mars. K-Pop singers who fight demons is honestly pretty tame for a nineties kid. It’s also unironically a great premise. I mean it.
In the opening sequence we see a village in medieval Korea being attacked by demons and then saved by a mysterious trio of singing shaman women. We learn that into every generation is born…it’s Buffy. It’s Buffy but there’s three of them and they’re singers who use a spell created by their song to stop demons entering the mortal world. And in each generation they pose as a music band.
What’s genius about this is that it’s very simple and intuitive to understand, but also opens up so many opportunities for telling different types of stories in different eras and styles. I mean, I don’t want Netflix to milk this property into a desiccated husk but at least we’ll get a lot of milk when they inevitably do.
So, in the modern era our hunters are HUNTR/X, a K-Pop trio consisting of leader Rumi, tough girl Mira and Genki girl Zoey.
We’re introduced to them battling some demons in an airplane right before crashing to Earth and playing a sold out concert in front of thousands of screaming fans. It’s the final show of their tour and Mira and Zoey are just looking forward to a long holiday of doing nothing and never leaving the couch.
But, Rumi is such a workaholic that she uploads their next single early, kicking off the promo cycle and cancelling their vacation without even asking the other two girls. At which point I thought: “wait, is she actually an unholy demon?”
So I think I’ve figured out why this thing was such a smash hit. It’s Frozen. I don’t mean it’s a ripoff but it’s very definitely chanelling that same drama-kid, big girl-emotion energy. Like Frozen, it’s very sincere, lacking in irony or snark and has a lot of BIG feelings served with some absolute bops. Oh, and and mix in some Buffy the Vampire Slayer complete with forbidden romance with a demon bad boy. Describing it like that makes it seem like a cynical checklist of things girls are into but all the elements are executed with so much skill and heart that it all feels organic and it all clicks.
So, the movie takes the world of battling K-Pop fan armies and literalises it as a literal battle for the fate of the world. The demon king, Gwi-Ma, is getting damn sick of the hunters foiling his attempts to invade the human world and suck everyone’s everyone’s delicious souls. A demon named Jinu proposes a new scheme, one so villainous, so evil, so goddamn reprehensible it could only be devised by a creature from the very pits of hell: form a boyband.
However, it turns out that Jinu is not wholly a demon, but was once a human musician who betrayed and abandoned his family to live in a palace as a royal musician. There is, of course, a an enemies to lovers plot where Jinu slowly falls in love with Rumi and he betrays the demon king to save the world.
There is not a single story beat that took me by surprise but that’s more a result of good, solid story-telling.
I like this movie. More than that, I’m very grateful to it.
I am, as you are aware, old as fuck. So it was a great relief to me when I watched K-Pop Demon Hunters, the Oscar Nominated, cultural juggernaut, hottest new thing in animation and my reaction was: “I like this. This is good. I am enjoying it.”
So yeah, good job, Gen Alpha. You picked a winner here. Sorry about…everything.
Scoring
Animation 17/20
Jeez, between this and Spider-verse...
Leads: 16/20
What if Elsa joined a K-Pop band? It’d be kinda cool, actually.
Villain: 15/20
Gwi-ma doesn’t really get a lot of spotlight but Lee Byung-hun gives a good dry, sinister performance. Oh, fun fact, he also voices the character in the Korean dub so that’s cool.
Supporting Characters: 16/20
Mira and Zoey are great backup, Jinu smoulders effectively and I love the big cat thing.
Music 17/20
If you like K-Pop, it’s some damn good K-Pop. I mean, I assume. What do I know? Maybe it’s a travesty and an insult to a venerable genre.
FINAL SCORE: 81%
NEXT UPDATE: 27 March 2026
NEXT TIME: Provided my DVD actually arrives on time (faster than a speeding bullet this thing is NOT)…
unshavedmouse 
Yeah, I dug this one a lot more than I thought I would. Good animation, jokes, and characters. Story feels more like the pilot to a show, but it’s fine.
Liked most of the songs, which is a lot more than I expected to. Can very much do without the bit where Jinu raps in his otherwise sincere love duet with Rumi – he may be Korean, but that rap contained Vanilla Ice levels of whiteness.
Overall a very good time, and deserves its success. The kids are alright.
Someday, I’ll see this film. Someday.
As I may have mentioned before, watched this film on a whim, adore that it has Strong Buffy Energy and songs.
Although it amuses me to note that “BUFFY, but there’s three of them” doesn’t automatically segue into a CHARMED joke.
…
I used to watch it with my little sister, you can’t prove I actually liked it!
Three Buffs does not a Charmed make.
Also, I see that you were either a Boyzone man or had a very, very miserable decade: ah well, at least we got BeWiched and The Corrs as a consolation.
B*witched were possibly the most underrated pop band of the decade
Yeah, I liked this. It does what it wants to do quite well, and it looks amazing to boot. And honestly, you could do so much worse for a movie that’s become the most watched original film on its own platform, especially when that platform is Netflix.
Right? Where do we get off rewarding quality?
K-Pop Demon Hunters is certainly a charming movie, and if interviews and commentary from the directors is any indication, they were really passionate about making this film.
At the same time, I also saw all of the plot beats before they happened, mostly because the film shares a lot of elements with another Netflix original that released beforehand, Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld.
Both of them are enjoyable in their own right and great representations of their respective cultures, love of food, family drama involving the lead protagonists, hot demon love interests, and a distinct vulnerability that many young women experience at a certain age and how often it’s tied with heritage and appearance.
Again, none of these are bad. It’s just we’ve seen a lot of this before.
I actually think Demon Hunters could’ve benefitted from a lengthier run time or done as a series like Jentry. There’s a lot to explore in the movie and it feels like it skipped straight to the end.