KPop Demon Hunters—A Battle of Heart and Soul

The world knows them as a viral K-pop group named HUNTR/X. In reality? They are a trio of demon hunters chosen specifically for their singing voices to maintain the Honmoon, the barrier that protects the world from demons. The premise might sound a little strange at first, but KPop Demon Hunters is wonderfully creative from start to finish.

KPop Demon Hunters follows Rumi (Arden Cho, singing voice: EJAE), Zoey (Ji-young Yoo, singing voice: Rei Ami), and Mira (May Hong, singing voice: Audrey Nuna) to the final show of their current HUNTR/X tour, where a giant crowd of fans have gathered to watch them sing. As they are set to arrive on-stage, their manager Bobby (Ken Jeong) sees their location steadily moving away from the concert location—leading HUNTR/X to realize their plane had been hijacked by demons. Easily dispatching them, they arrive just in time to their show. After they perform their last song, they’re delighted to see a glint of gold over the Honmoon. Their job in particular is to turn the Honmoon completely gold with their songs, strengthened by the power of their fans—sealing demons away from the world for good.

Zoey and Mira in particular are excited for their time off, but Rumi doesn’t seem to be—announcing their new single before the other two even get a chance to sit down properly. Their break is cut wildly short as they prepare for the debut and release tour. However, they quickly run into an obstacle—as they begin recording, Rumi begins to lose her voice. As Rumi walks into the changing room and unzips her jacket, Rumi is shown to be part-demon despite being a demon hunter. Her demon marks, which have only spread over time, have now reached her throat—causing the voice loss she’d experienced while recording their song. Her earlier workaholism was a push to make things right—having been promised that her marks will disappear when the Honmoon is made gold and the demons are permanently cut off.

To make matters worse, a demon named Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop) has proposed to the demon king Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) his plan to fight back against the demon hunters—create a K-pop boy band known as the Saja Boys to steal HUNTR/X’s fans and weaken the Honmoon. Since the Honmoon was created, Gwi-Ma has only gotten weaker as demons were no longer able to steal human souls for him. In exchange, Jinu asks that Gwi-Ma erases his human memories. The Saja Boys are an immediate hit in the human world and only HUNTR/X are aware of their true natures as demons.

Due to Rumi’s dying voice, their only way forward is through—chasing the Saja Boys right into an ambush. Rumi ignores the ambush, sprinting past it all and leaving her teammates behind to fight Jinu head-on where Rumi’s sleeve is cut and her demon marks are revealed. They both freeze in realization—and before anyone else can see, Jinu wraps and ties a cloth around her exposed arm and disappears back into the demon realm.

The demon marks are a rather intriguing social allegory in this film—they are meant to represent the shame and pain in any given person. Some people choose to embrace these things rather than fight back—portrayed as demons who seemingly have no remorse for the suffering they cause. However, Jinu—despite being a demon himself and the mind behind the master plan—is seen struggling to come to grips with the lingering guilt of his human memories throughout the entire movie, so much so that he requests Gwi-Ma to remove them outright. Rumi struggles too, hiding away her marks in shame and embarrassment—even to her friends, who as a child hoped would understand, but the idea had been quickly shot down by her adoptive mother Celine (Yunjin Kim), a former demon hunter. It is the paralyzing fear of conditional love that’s been instilled upon her that forces Rumi into this determined workaholism, in hopes that she can hide the shameful parts of herself away for long enough that they’ll disappear. This, of course, only causes it to fester—Jinu’s marks having consumed him whole and turned him fully into a demon while Rumi’s continues to grow throughout the film, only receding when the two open up to each other about their failures and wrongdoings.

While the plot has a few holes in it—for example, if demons were still capable of getting in through the Honmoon, why not send some to steal souls for Gwi-Ma?—it doesn’t take away from the main aspects of the film. In terms of representation, this film is absolutely stellar. Despite being a silly movie that actively asks the audience to suspend their belief over and over, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans were able to seamlessly incorporate Korean culture and mythos—reinventing bits and pieces while its origins are still deeply rooted in real folklore as mythic fiction often is—in a way that’s enjoyable and doesn’t stray too far from its source. Rumi, Zoey and Mira are well-written, the three having varying personalities that actually make them feel like real, three-dimensional people. They’re messy and emotional and far from perfect, but heartfelt and heroic all the same—and it makes it so easy to cheer for them because it all feels so genuine. The voice cast perfectly represents the characters—giving vibrant voices to an already amazing group of characters.

The end product is silly and comedic, but earnest all the same. From the dazzling animation to catchy lyrics, from hearty jokes to heart-clutching action, KPop Demon Hunters is a remarkable film audiences won’t soon forget.