I’m a K-pop novice. I know Blackpink and I know BTS. Beyond that, all I know is it’s a delightfully catchy genre of music, and director Maggie Kang and Chris Applegate make it a fine setting for their animated feature “KPop Demon Hunters.” Thankfully, no one needs to be a K-pop expert to appreciate the film (although I suspect those better versed in its culture will find more to enjoy here), and while its plotting is fairly thin, the movie relishes the outsized emotions of its characters and world without ever veering into outright parody. There are times when its soap opera trappings struggle to exist along its goofier aspects, but with a collection of upbeat tunes and colorful animation, “KPop Demon Hunters,” makes for a charming little Netflix movie.
Pop trios aren’t just megastars: they’re saving the world from demons. The evil underground force Gwi-Ma (Byung-hun Lee) wants to send demons to the Earth to suck out people’s souls. Thankfully, pop trios throughout history have used their musical talents to tap into the souls of their fans and create the Honmoon, a kind of forcefield that stops demons from coming into our world. A few manage to slip through the cracks, but the trio can also conjure weapons to defeat them with some sick martial arts moves. The latest trio is K-pop group Huntrix, comprised of the determined Rumi (Arden Cho), bubbly Zoey (Ji-young Yoo), and sardonic Mira (May Hong). Everything’s going fine until the demon Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop) comes up with a plan to beat the trio at their own game by forming a K-pop boy band and leech away Huntrix’s fans. This couldn’t come at a worse time for Rumi, who is trying to hide her half-demon heritage from her friends and bandmates while also slowly falling for the emotionally conflicted Jinu.
This would all be painfully overwrought if not for the terrific thread of comedy running through the whole film that knows when to poke fun at K-pop and K-drama tropes. The comedy between the members of Huntrix is where the film really shines, and while the romance stuff between Mira and Jinu is all well and good at providing an emotional core to the film, it never quite clicks alongside the anime-inspired goofball visuals. That’s not to say that anime can’t do soap opera (obviously that’s a genre where it excels), but there can be a bit of whiplash going from Zoey and Mira having heart eyes to Mira and Jinu sharing an emotional moment about Jinu’s dark past as a human. It’s not so much that the movie needs to discard the emotional elements, but if they were going to head in that direction, then they needed to provide stronger arcs for Zoey and Mira, who largely play as comic relief until the film’s climax.
Thankfully, the film manages to stay aloft by being a musical and sending catchy pop tune after catchy pop tune into the plot. The fact that these songs have stakes—the more popular group gets mankind’s souls, basically—helps keep the tension going throughout the film where instead of competing over something as empty as fame, the need for Huntrix to write their best song ever feels worthwhile even if the larger conflict of pop-stars-vs-demons is inherently silly. That’s a difficult needle to thread, and credit goes to Kang and Applegate for understanding that even though their setting may be outlandish, they still have to treat the stakes as real.
While “KPop Demon Hunters” falls a bit shy of Netflix’s upper echelon of animated features like “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” and “Nimona,” it at least has the courtesy of being a fizzy, lighthearted time that relishes its flashy nature. It’s built to be of the moment like much of pop music and just as evanescent. While disposability is a key feature of many Netflix movies, “KPop Demon Hunters” knows how to keep our attention with good songs and sharp animation so that we’re not merely keeping the film in the background while we do laundry. It’s a pleasant bop that will charm you even if it the tunes start to fade the moment the credits roll.
“KPop Demon Hunters” is now streaming on Netflix.
