KPop Demon Hunters Review

KPop Demon Hunters streams connected Netflix opening Friday, June 20.

It whitethorn look unusual for Sony Pictures Animation to travel the meteoric occurrence of 2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with a movie astir South Korean popular idols who moonlight arsenic slayers of supernatural evil. But look astatine it this way: The Spider-Verse bid and the wide-ranging, megapopular philharmonic benignant known arsenic k-pop are 2 of the astir beloved, powerful, and influential taste forces of the past 10 years. Why wouldn’t these 2 large tastes sensation large together?

Enter KPop Demon Hunters, the caller animated enactment philharmonic from first-time manager Maggie Kang and co-director and writer Chris Appelhans that taps into k-pop’s idiosyncratic dependable and quirks to trade a communicative astir spot done adversity and the powerfulness inherent successful surviving one’s truth. It isn’t conscionable a worthy, often hilarious follow-up to SPA’s Oscar-nominated masterpiece. It’s a relentless solemnisation of some the euphony that inspired it and the mean of animation itself.

KPop Demon Hunters centers connected Huntrix, a Korean popular trio made up of laser-focused pb vocalist Rumi (Arden Cho), aloof pb dancer and choreographer Mira (May Hong), and bubbly lyricist/resident rapper Zoey (Jin-Young Yoo). While they’ve built a pursuing with their music, the radical are successful information a cohort of demon hunters tasked with safeguarding the satellite from the ravenous soul-sucking hordes of the demon king Gwi-Ma (Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun), who is hellbent connected feasting connected humanity and asserting his dominion implicit the Earth. If that premise sounds a spot similar “Sailor Moon à la Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” oregon “The Powerpuff Girls meets Power Rangers,” well, you're not excessively acold disconnected the mark: The movie is arsenic overmuch astir inheriting the generational mantle of defending humanity from otherworldly threats arsenic it is astir balancing that colossal work on with the situation of mundane life.

Beyond these notation points, KPop Demon Hunters asserts its ain individuality with ample drama, comedy, and personality, positive a bevy of catchy bop-worthy tracks – with Huntrix’s vocals provided by the trio of EJAE, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami – and electrifying enactment that kept maine locked to my surface and anxious for more. On the eve of their top victory, the legions of Gwi-Ma contiguous Huntrix with their astir formidable foes yet: A demon lad set radical led by Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop, with singing by Andrew Choi), a human-turned-demon with a mysterious past. To decision them, Huntrix volition not lone person to conflict their demonic counterparts some on- and off-stage, but face their ain long-buried secrets and insecurities successful bid to set unneurotic and banish Gwi-Ma erstwhile and for all. Metaphysical silliness aside, it makes for a beauteous moving watch.

KPop Demon Hunters is yet different nexus successful a concatenation that began with 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, bearing the inventive blend of animation styles, textures, and tones that carried implicit into spiritual successors similar Puss successful Boots: The Last Wish, The Bad Guys, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Impressive arsenic they are, nary of those films negociate to lucifer Spider-Verse’s peerless synthesis of ocular ingenuity, tender storytelling, and infectious euphony rather similar Kang, Appelhans, and squad person here. The combat sequences, with their flashy choreography and anime-inflected verve, thin heavy connected philharmonic numbers featuring originals songs penned by a who’s who database of fashionable Western artists and Kpop mainstays similar Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Chaeyoung of Twice, who wrote and performed the soundtrack’s braggadocious pb azygous “Takedown.” For each its echoes of Miles Morales’ adventures crossed realities, KPop Demon Hunters besides feels similar what would hap if Riot Games and Fortiche went all-in aft the decision of Arcane and made an animated diagnostic together: a visually sumptuous enactment phantasy with the benignant of heartfelt thorax belters that are definite to marque ardent converts of fans of animated musicals similar Frozen, Moana, Encanto and the like.

That’s to accidental thing of KPop Demon Hunter’s comedic chops, nor its melodramatic depth. It’s gratifying to ticker Rumi, Mira, and Zoey’s travel toward accepting the parts of themselves they’d alternatively fell from the remainder of the world; the aforesaid tin beryllium said of them hanging retired together, making exaggerated stank faces, and thirsting aft their demonic counterpart’s ab muscles – contempt the information that they’re, you know, demons. KPop Demon Hunters knows however to tackle superior taxable substance without taking itself excessively earnestly which, on with its stunning accumulation worth and breathtaking enactment sequences, makes for a wholly entertaining experience.