Review: KPop Demon Hunters Teaches Us That Harmony Thwarts Evil

A girl group battles a demon boy band in the wildly popular Netflix musical.

KPop Demon Hunters, a Netflix original movie released worldwide on June 20, quickly became the most-watched movie on the platform, amassing over 314 million views by mid-September. It also earned much popular praise and critical acclaim.

The conceit: Demon hunters use the gift of song to unite the world in (literal) harmony by creating the "Golden Honmoon," an impregnable barrier against demons. The latest generation of demon hunters make up the wildly popular girl group Huntr/x. They are opposed by the Saja Boys, a heartthrob demon boy band led by Jinu, a self-loathing demon who acquired a life of luxury by abandoning his mother and little sister to poverty.

The Saja Boys erode the Honmoon by winning the adoration of Huntr/x's fans and nearly destroy it by exposing Rumi as part demon—a fact she'd hidden at her mentor's well-intentioned but ill-considered behest.

The movie's moral: Harmony thwarts evil while discord abets it. Given Rumi's background, there is also the pleasingly cosmopolitan side point that ancestry does not define one's essence or role. Peace can only be attained by those who accept their complex natures instead of pretending they are without "faults and fears."

Comments

[Chumby]

The movie's moral: Harmony thwarts evil while discord abets it.

Sounds stolen from LotR. See Melkor’s discord. Though you should be free to watch this modded spice girls 2 stuff.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us”

[mad.casual]

It's interesting that the protagonist is ashamed by the symbolism of her ancestry while the demonic antagonist is tortured by the willful rejection of his ancestry and Jack, somehow, only manages to extract, "the pleasingly cosmopolitan side point that ancestry does not define one's essence or role" and not a larger, more balanced lesson.

Reality: Castrate children!
Reason: Look, sometimes it's bad to castrate children but sometimes kids are born wrong and parents should be abided. Both sides.

Reality: Ancestral determinism sucks but families do their best and you should do your best not to outright reject them. Both sides.
Nicastro: Damn straight ancestral determinism sucks! Only backwards, parochial hicks would let their ancestry define them.

[n00bdragon]

This is trying way too hard to force a "Libertarian Worldview" on literally everything. This is in every way a simplistic children's movie with one surprisingly good song ("Golden"). There's nothing to analyze here. The bad guys are bad (because they manipulate and corrupt people) and get defeated by the good guys who are good (because they are affectionate to and supportive of each other). Don't analyze this too deeply.

[MollyGodiva]

KPDH is not a "simplistic children". It is mostly for adults, has depth, and seven original songs, all great. Takedown (both versions) is better than Golden.

[shadydave]

Not beating the Teen Reason allegations.

[AT]

Why does it not surprise me in the least that Jack watches this.

[MollyGodiva]

It is common courtesy not to give plot spoilers in movie reviews.