This popped up on Netflix a couple of weeks ago and has been taking the internet by storm. My kids were intrigued and so we watched it last night and I was surprised that there hasn't been a post yet.



It's pretty good and I enjoyed it from start to finish. Sony Pictures Animation (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) did the animation. The music is good and not too over the top. They have a few singers from the KPop group TWICE (my kids knew who they were) and the soundtrack is wonderful.

Yes, it's a little kitchy but it hit all the right notes. I'd watch it again.

It's great. The story is actually a bit of a mess if you think too hard about it but I can forgive it for the animation and themes. As I said in the Elio thread, it actually made Elio seem lesser since we paid in the theater to see that the day after we watched Kpop at home.

On a side note I went to LA's Anime Expo last weekend and fanart was all over the place, some quick work by some enterprising artists down in artist alley. I assume SDCC will be similar.

Your post made me ask my kids about it... and we decided to watch it instead of seeing Elio (of which we are going to wait until it hits D+ to watch it).

Thanks for the tip.

Great, now PIxar has another person to blame for their box office...

There's a lot of great stuff here (Magical Girl meets Spider-Verse meets Musical), but I couldn't help but think the movie missed a huge opportunity to examine the extremely toxic aspects of K-Pop, that would have totally lined up with its themes. The exploitation by the "idol machine" and the possessiveness of fans are real-world antagonists against the movie's message of embracing your true self and not needing to hide "impure" aspects of artists' lives from the public.

While I agree conceptually, no way they would get any Kpop group to sing these songs if they even broached that topic, and I'm sure there would be a ton of backlash from the country and the industry if they went that route.

I mean the story doesn't delve that deep, mainly due to time constraints anyway. We barely know the other two demon hunters. There's no drama (except in her head) about whether her friends would accept her. Then you have the whole "demons are bad and we have to kill them, but maybe some of them are ok and forced to do stuff" and the "good" ones are basically either really pretty or really cute, which seems like, kinda shallow? It's not like Rumi ever turned hideous either.

Yeah, it was weird how they built up "maybe demons are closer to us than we thought" so hard, just to flip back to "lol all Hellspawn must be annihilated" at the very end.

I mentioned it – along with another animated film coming in November called IN YOUR DREAMS – in the Asian cinema thread back in June. And yes, I knew they were both American films with Asian characters and settings, but I wasn’t sure either would have much lasting impact being buried on Netflix. So if IN YOUR DREAMS eventually gets its own thread, it won’t be the first mention hereabouts.

The dark side of K-Pop – and it’s extremely dark, as many here probably know – has been well documented in a sort of fragmented fashion over the years with seemingly little effect on the machine itself. I have to imagine, though, that somebody, somewhere is working on a more appropriate documentary film or series about the whole system. But in this era of everybody ‘documenting’ everything, I wonder if even that will have any effect when another K-POP DEMON HUNTERS movie and/or more stuff like it will be very effective distractions.

Still, it would be fascinating to see a more serious American-made cartoon laced with complex ‘adult’ elements like what you describe, and that isn’t the usual cutesy/glittery feature-length (and overused) ‘learn to accept yourself’ fantasy with sitcom humour but instead delves into those kinds of topics in very adult ways. It seems like only the much broader Japanese animation industry has been able to ‘go there’ in terms of dark, problematic issues in its shows.

And I think you can totally touch on those subjects without losing kid-friendliness if you approach them via allegory. "The manager is actually a demon working for Gwi-Ma and Huntr/x is being used for his purposes (then the boy band turns against Gwi-Ma and help Huntr/x?)" or "fans think Rumi got tattoos and they turn against the group, further bolstering Saja's popularity" would have totally worked within the type of movie they're trying to make. The choice to go with the intragroup conflict because someone is withholding information is very cliched and frustrating

Totally agree with all of this, but sadly “cliched and frustrating” have been hallmarks of mainstream American animation for ages now. Peel away the the razzle-dazzle CGI fantasy, talking sitcom-y animals, or ethnic ‘cosmetics’ of the week, and the vast majority of mainstream American animated films are nothing but the same old ‘believe in yourself’ message. It’s an ok message, I suppose, but it’s so effing boring and predictable at this point. Even a lot of those cheap European cartoons that have littered DVD and streaming for years now – many of them made by directors and/or animators with former or current ties to Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc. who probably need the money – boil down to this same messaging. It’s such an easy, no-bake recipe. I really wish the whole industry would just grow up, get cynical, be realistic, even be ugly sometimes, create dark and complicated characters that aren’t just the same old avatars to be ‘put in their place’. There are animated films like this, but they’re often low-budget, arthouse/fest darlings, or one-and-done ‘foreign’ films (Wolfhouse, Persepolis, King of Pigs, Seoul Station, Bird Boy, Suicide Shop, Triplets of Belleville, Breadwinner, Chico & Rita, and so many others come to mind), that don’t gain the kind of broad traction that these cookie-cutter ‘Calarts bean mouth’ movies we’re subjected to constantly now.

Of course the movies I listed above are aimed at older audiences (well, most of them) and are perhaps limited in comparison to the average Pixar sitcom movie due to their foreign production and budget limitations, but all of them, I think, have darker, more realistic aspects that could be folded into American animated blockbusters without necessarily alienating entire audiences or causing boxoffice flops. People, including young people, are so much savvier and resilient than a lot of multiplex animation gives them credit for these days.

Can't what is apparently supposed to be a fun, silly movie be fun and silly? Everyone seems pleased as punch that we have a new Superman movie that (regardless of its flaws) isn't grimdark, but then complain that some fluffy little movie about what looks like a Sailor Moon-esque KPop themed band of super heroes isn't grimdark?

Finally got around to watching this and had a great time. Yes, a more nuanced take on the subject matter that deconstructs the heavier themes without losing its sense of fun could have been great. However, these days even Pixar, the defacto kings of such storytelling, can't seem to pull that off anymore. Besides, sometimes you just want a bit of lighthearted fun and this movie provides that in spades. So no complaints from me.

My kids have seen this a couple times and the soundtrack is playing in our home constantly now, of course.

I watched it last night and it was fun. Yes, a little shallow on a few story beats and relationships, which is too bad. We got so much of that in the Spider-verse movies from the same studio that I'm a little surprised by that. Still, a fun story, good songs, and amazing animation. As a parent of girls, I liked that each of the women were beautiful and fashionable and posed with all their extra cuteness, yet they weren't overtly sexualized or dripping with sex appeal. This kind of thing could have gone either way, I think, and I'm glad they went the route they did.

If they make more, we'll watch more.

Cant we have both? Like, ever? Even after decades of films that, at their core, were just like this one (minus the K-culture cosmetics, of course)? I won’t speak for IBJoel, but that was simply my hope. While DEMON HUNTERS might have been an opportunity to at least touch on thornier issues in the real-world material (hardly “grimdark”), it’s fine the way it is: visually splashy, cookie cutter, stuck on Netflix, but with a very timely Korean/Asian glaze (which was nice to finally see). There’s nothing wrong with wishing that American animation would finally grow up, even just on occasion, maybe even discover a balance between the kiddie stuff and ‘mainstream’ animated movies for older kids and adults. Instead we keep getting variations on sitcom characters and plots with the mandatory three tropes: believe in yourself, accept others as they are, teamwork gets the job done. There will always be a market for that, with every new generation that comes along, but once they reach a certain age, if they want something edgier, the North American animation industry can generally be relied upon not to provide it. Just seems like a missed opportunity, that’s all.

And just to clarify, I thought the movie was excellent, despite my recognizing the same old tropes in it that are the foundation of most western animated films. I was also pleasantly surprised that virtually every Asian cast member was actually of Korean descent (whereas perhaps years ago some studios probably would’ve just cast a whole slew of Asian-American ‘names’ because they figured the bulk of the dialogue was in English and many viewers might not care). None of that really changes my opinion that western animated films will almost always play it safe when they probably don’t have to, and even when there are signs that the formula may be getting tired (ELIO flopping, lots of cartoon features dropping on streaming, etc).

But hey, at the end of the day even someone as grimdark as Clive Barker isn’t immune to the formula. Got this from the library last night. It’s no Sony K-POP, but it was . . . ok.

This movie is nuts and I love it. Q: who did the singing vocals for Huntrix? Was it an actual KPop group?

Several pop groups did the singing. One of them, Twice, is shown partway through the end credits in recording session footage.

However, the main voices were the following:

​​​​​​Arden Cho as Rumi, Ejae provides Rumi's singing voice.
May Hong as Mira, Audrey Nuna provides Mira's singing voice.
Ji-young Yoo as Zoey, Rei Ami provides Zoey's singing voice.

It's interesting that Arden Cho is also a singer but was not used as the singing voice for Rumi. Similarly, Ahn Hyo-seop is a singer and voices Jinu, but Jinu's singing voice is provided by Andrew Choi.
​​​​​

The story of Twice, which debuted a decade ago, is an interesting read. They’re one of the heavyweights in that industry, and not coincidentally released their fourth Korean studio album last Friday, three weeks to the day after DEMON HUNTERS premiered (with a sixth Japanese studio album coming soon). As with the over two-hundred active K-Pop groups performing today – not to mention the hundreds of defunct ones since the formula started taking shape in the mid- to late-90’s – the wiki entry is a decent overview (every group has one, of course, but be warned: it’s a daunting rabbit hole). Mind you, their history, much like most K-Pop tunes, is largely interchangeable with that of virtually all of the other groups in such a prefabricated and tightly-controlled industry. Surprisingly they’ve remained relatively scandal free - only minor stuff except that time the Taiwanese member of the group dared to wave her own country’s flag on a South Korean TV program, which of course got China’s authoritarian panties in a twist, which frustratingly led to her backtracking like some hostage (New York Times article; or paywall-free version).

I thought the group’s theme song and their other song “Strategy” in DEMON HUNTERS were . . . ok, but if you listen to enough K-Pop (which I shouldn’t admit that I do ) you’ll know how interchangeable they are with pretty much every K-Pop tune, like, ever: tastes great; less filling.

Incidentally, DEMON HUNTERS isn’t this group’s first foray into soundtracking. While some existing songs have apparently turned up in movies or shows over there (none that I’ve noticed personally), this one was specifically recorded as the theme song for the 2018 live-action manga adaptation SENSEI KUNSHU:




Everyone has been telling me how much they love this film. But I honestly can't bring myself to watch it, it's just not really my cup of tea if I am honest.

Is it really worth a watch anyway?

No, I think if it's not up your alley, you don't need to check it out

Hmm. Busy day here for “Kacy”.

I’ll remain optimistic for now that they aren’t just circling the political forum.

The weekend of August 23rd and 24th, this movie is getting a limited theatrical “sing-along” release.

https://www.fandango.com/kpop-demon-...movie-overview

We’ll be there! 😁

I checked out the local Alamo Drafthouse and it is practically sold out already.

Every theater chain in San Antonio is participating in this. Seats are plentiful around here.

Ah ok, that made me go check fandango and I thought this was going to be one of those events that only have like two showings.

I signed up for an alert, but I doubt any PR theaters will be showing this.