TL;DR – Half Musical, Half Action Romp, Half Romance, Half Meditation on the Power of Art, Half Exploration on the Consuming Power of Shame, and All Style.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service to view this film.

KPop Demon Hunters Review Introduction –

As we get to our final films from 2025 before we write our best-of lists, it becomes very clear that no list would feel right if I didn’t engage with the most-streamed movie of the year. If any film has earned the right to be declared a cultural phenomenon this year, it would probably be this. It would be wrong to look at the year without exploring something with such a large cultural impact. Well, then, it is time to dive in and see if it lives up to all the accolades.  

So, to set the scene, throughout history, there have been demons escaping into our world to steal souls that are used as power by their dark lord Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun). However, throughout history, there have always been those with strength of voice and character who have fought back and banished these demons back to the world they spawned from. Every generation, there are a new trio of Hunters that use their voices to reinforce the barrier between the worlds, the Honmoon. The current generation is a K-Pop band Huntrix featuring Rumi (Arden Cho/Ejae), Mira (May Hong/Audrey Nuna) & Zoey (Ji-young Yoo/Rei Ami). When a demon incursion goes very wrong, things get tense in the underworld because soon the Honmoon will turn golden and the demons will be stopped forever. It is this moment of desperation when the demon Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop/Andrew Choi) comes up with a novel plan to defeat Huntrix: go after their fans by creating a demon boy band called Saja Boys.    

Narrative

I am going to start the review by exploring what might be the weakest part of the film, so that I can spend the rest championing it. While there is depth here that we will jump to in a moment, the beat-to-beat narrative was quite bare bones. From the moment Rumi reveals she is part-demon, you could probably chart the rest of the film out from that moment and be correct. It moves through such a predictable set of motions that it felt like I had watched it repeatedly before. There is a fine line between familiar and predictable, and I think this slips a touch too far into the latter.

However, while the overarching narrative was quite predictable, down to all the villain turns you can see coming a mile away. Where it does stand apart is in the themes it is exploring. The central hook of this film is the power of shame and how it can be used to rule our lives to our detriment. Shame about who we are, shame about our past, and shame about being found out as different. The earnest way they explore that through the lens of a K-pop band, who are also demon hunters, helped to elevate the straightforward story by giving it the much-needed depth.

Characters

One of the core strengths of the film must be its roster of characters and the excellence with which they are voiced. Within a space of a minute, you already know who they are, what their personalities are, and where they fit in this world, and that is some economical character building if I have ever seen it. Every character in this film is fun or fascinating, and usually both. Also, I am a sucker for a cute yet a bit odd animal sidekick, and we get two of them this time around. Our core trio were a blast, and they go hard right from the start. I think the opening fight sequence in the plane, making sure their ramyeon does not get spilled, was a delight to behold and captured their essence right from the start, which the film then expands on till right to the end.

Animation

Talking about the action, we need to discuss the animation, because it might be some of Sony’s best. The animation is clearly working in the same space as was pioneered in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but it has taken it in an interesting new direction. It takes inspiration from different animation styles from Asia, while also having a touch of almost stop-animation feel to it. As this is a story that revolves around both action and music, it needs to have a juxtaposition between fluidity and hardness as the dance moves flow and hit. They understood right from the start that some of the big set-piece moments were going to be the musical performances, and you can see all of the work that has gone into making every part of that work its best.      

Music

Which of course leads us to the final thing I want to talk about, the music. KPop Demon Hunters straddles several different genres, and one of the ones it succeeds at is being a musical. Sure, it is a musical in the modern animated sense, and in this case, that means we get almost music videos slotted into the film. However, I must confess, every song in this film slapped, and it is clear there was a solid reason this entered the popular zeitgeist as hard as it did. This was clearly supported by the animation that made every single music video the focal point of the film. This made the lyrics and music hit harder than they may have otherwise done. My favourite was most likely Golden, but I am not sure that is a particularly unique call.

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend KPop Demon Hunters? Yes, we would. It captures that intense world of K-pop and brings it crashing into this wild supernatural dance-off thriller. It’s electric, fascinating, and has more than one song that will stay stuck in your head.   

Have you watched KPop Demon Hunters? Let us know what you thought in the comments below. If you liked KPop Demon Hunters, we would recommend Better Manor Rocketman to you because they are musicals that also understand the power of their medium and use it in weird and interesting ways that celebrate the emotional architecture at its core.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Feel free to share this review on social media and check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of KPop Demon Hunters
Directed by – Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans
Story by – Maggie Kang
Screenplay by – Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan, Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans
Music by – Marcelo Zarvos
Cinematography by – Gary H. Lee
Edited by – Nathan Schauf
Production/Distribution Companies – Sony Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation & Netflix
Starring – Arden Cho, Ejae, May Hong, Audrey Nuna, Ji-young Yoo & Rei Ami
With – Ahn Hyo-seop, Andrew Choi, Yunjin Kim, Lea Salonga, Joel Kim Booster, Samuil Lee, Alan Lee, Kevin Woo, SungWon Cho, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Daniel Dae Kim, Ken Jeong & Lee Byung-hun
Rating – Australia: PG;