When K-pop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey aren't selling out stadiums, they're using their secret powers to protect their fans from supernatural threats.
K-Pop, as a genre and an art form, has always stood out to me as one of the more fascinating and perplexing fanbases I’ve ever peeped into. Despite the stalled album sales, rocketing scandals, and the rather fickle flippancy of the fandom, its catchy hooks, polished choreography, impeccable visual quality and its overall strategic adaptability and sense of belonging it fosters to fans on a global scale makes K-pop one of the more diverse spectacles I’ll feast my eyes on.
That being said, I’m not too crazy for the genre. “K-Pop Demon Hunters”, admittedly though, struck me from its mere title alone….and my god, is it a riot.
Pithy, waggish and playful, Maggie Kang (making her directorial debut) and Chris Appelhans’ combined direction can be coltish as a spirited commitment to its own irreverence but is otherwise an exercise of tight kinetic control that’s both weirdly sincere and sincerely weird. Their puckish energy together goes all the way into the realms of pure cartoon but lean into grounded reality and stylistic excess to power their thesis statement.
A hyperreal sheen that samples, remixes and lampoons decades of anime traditions, drawing and taking inspiration from webtoons and manhwa (Korean graphic novels) to create a ceaseless inventive visual tapestry that’s as much a homage to K-pop’s aesthetic as it is a send-up of it, this glitter cannon barrage of animation isn’t quite a maximalists wet dream but it does come close. Every frame is a juggernaut of visual force, a kinetic roar of color, rhythm, and light so saturated you can almost smell the battery acid tang of its neon palette and my god, the shrewd awareness in its own visual vocabulary mesh well with both the production design and worldbuilding sporting the digitally-overclocked world of Seoul’s reality into a luminous, liminal zone between music video set-piece, haunted urban maze and perpetual mind-palace hellscape.
Certain interludes would border on annoying if not for the earnest tongue-in-cheek love for the subject matter and some discrepancies can be found with the frame rate swing from buttery smooth to deliberately jerky but its never stylized at the expense of clarity, cohesion or narrative direction.
Ironically for all the craziness surrounding it, the cinematography takes a more subdued approach to highlight that zaniness but keep the action fluid at once. Between its more simplistic variety of angles, a nigh-relentless breakneck pace and editing that always comes milliseconds off from being elegantly placed, the camera nearly operates with a logic and momentum entirely its own without directly muddying the waters. It comes out the best during the crisp blitzkrieg of complicated stylized fight choreography; ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. It’s not Spiderverse or Kung Fu Panda levels of greatness but still a certification under popcorn-mania can be applied here.
The diverse clashing of outfits, color psychology and showcase how important fashion is in K-Pop culture, its tone darts between snarky meta-wit, the unselfconscious slapstick of an early morning fever dream and drastic suffocating peril almost seamlessly, meta-jokes mostly land if you’re paying attention, the references fly with the frequency of chyrons on a comeback stage, its surprisingly dense with tension on its pathos since the movie is too honest about its own obsessions to be truly cynical and the crucial role music plays both diegetically and non-diegetically is rather astonishing. Sure, some of the music and vocal tracks were clearly lowballed by an excessive use of MIDI and voice correction but between Marcelo Zavros’ score and the bolsterous soundtrack, it’s otherwise exquisitely crafted to mirror the highs and lows of the plot.
God, did I get a kick out of this cast. Outside their uncanny dashing of comedic timing and sublime chemistry ricocheting off each other, everyone gives a bubbly salivating vibe to their performances and while not every character they’re given is anchored with a firm handling on aura farming, the acting carries the story when the latter begins floundering.
So imagine the theatrics and vibes from Totally Spies, Sailor Moon and K/DA crossbred with the rich mythology and demonology steeped in contemporary Korean culture, the high-concept yet tedious minutiae surrounding three Ghostbusters-like pest control pros and the blueprints of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Hannah Montana; it’s practically a giant gumbo pot of elegantly kitschy absurdity and the homey coziness of your typical Saturday morning cartoon. Ambitious to a fault, it does make the best of that checked duality; for all its chaos, the movie has a laser-focused sense of purpose, and the clarity of its vision means you’re rarely lost for long…..even if the story itself can come across as fairly generic and manufactured in choosing its moments.
Said story though isn’t completely vanilla though, as it locks on a much thorough demonstration of K-Pop idol culture than I thought I was going to get, capturing the many physical and psychological fronts idols have to perform against and sacrifice in order to keep their fans engaged, including their own feelings. Between music idols, entertainment execs and social media influencers masquerading as demons who have their own ‘demons’, there’s so many fun yet unsettling layers of satire to the commentary amongst themes of shame, guilt, and what it means to embrace every individual part of yourself, even the more nasty, unappealing sides. While far from a genuinely original prospect in films, I appreciate the lengths they went to to essentially tear down the concept of perfectionism and stand its ground as a passionate advocate for how the art you create can and often will create a loving community. But confronting yourself is the best way to reclaim your agency—-not just through fame, but by literally fighting the monsters that try to consume them and it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if you didn’t care about the characters.
And it also questions the legitimacy behind redemption. In a day and age where we’re so focused on throwing people away for a single sin (even if the intensity of it is enough to call their entire character into question), it’s often easy to overlook or underestimate someone actively putting their best foot forward to be better. It’s why I love the ending for Not Okay because redemption is not something to be easily tossed around; it’s a slow, agonizing, constant work-in-progress and only those willing to bear the brunt of that long arduous journey will be the ones most deserving of it.
Yet, I can’t help but feel like for all the various cultural, visual and thematic depth this movie already has, it had to sacrifice even more to be condensed to a more disposable runtime. The lore is intriguing enough on its own but the litany of unanswered questions it leaves in the open feel blurry and unspecific to the set-up IT ITSELF set itself up for. Crunching down the sympathetic nature of the demons turned against their will, how one even becomes a demon in the first place, the mystery surrounding Rumi’s birth and her internal moral quandary on playing both sides playing into future conflicts and the true reach of Gwi-ma’s powers and influence among other things leave this world ripe for the picking for dissection and future discussions…..and most of those goalposts were never going to be reached under this rather lenient 98 minute runtime.
Like, it’s one of those weird UNO-reverse effects where to gain depth, you must lose it first if that makes sense.
And there’s also Celine, who was built as the Demon Hunters mentor in brief flashbacks and barely did anything of much vital importance throughout the entire course of the story. I’m convinced with how dismissive and nonchalant she was acting that she was meant to be a secret twist antagonist, which would explain why she was hardly in the movie and so specific on having things be executed a certain way…..but they didn’t have much time to broaden that out or save it for a follow-up. Hell, the breakneck pacing occasionally leaving a lot of character beats or emotional pivots gasping for air means not many characters here get enough time for depth besides Rumi and Jinu.
Walking the wire between entertainment and empowerment without turning heavy handed, this Kill Bill meets Blackprint genre blend celebrates and satires its own love for K-pop culture, anime-style storytelling and commentary with claws, but also pushes back against the toxic expectations placed on people in the entertainment industry. Exhilarating from the get-go and there isn’t a single dull moment.
