Why genres fans shouldn’t sleep on KPop Demon Hunters …
KPop Demon Hunters was a global phenomenon in 2025. And like most global phenomenons, I didn’t experience it for myself until a year later.
If you’ve never seen the Netflix original or only know about it from memes and other forms of cultural osmosis (i.e., McDonald’s commercials) I think you might be surprised by two things. First and foremost, it’s a genuinely great animated action-comedy movie that feels WAY fresher and better written than most of the big time, big studio cartoon features we get nowadays. And secondly, its horror elements — and especially its horror influences — are almost impossibly to downplay.
So maybe calling KPop Demon Hunters a “pure” horror movie is a stretch … maybe even a ludicrous one. But you can’t say it isn’t a movie that is devoid of certain genre touches and flourishes. Indeed, the movie itself is pretty much the modern day take on all of those Satanic Panic/Moral Majority reactionary rocksploitation movies of the ‘80s like Black Roses and Trick Or Treat. Which means, yes, the Saja Boys are pretty much the spiritual grandchildren of Sammi Curr and the guitar swinging driller killer from The Slumber Party Massacre 2.
When you look at the structure of KPop Demon Hunters it’s essentially a fusion of Josie and the Pussycats and Vampire Hunter D. And no, I NEVER thought I’d mention those two movies in the same breath, either. The whole motif of having a girl band serve as secret protectors of the universe is hardly a new idea — Jem and the Holograms, anybody? — and there’s definitely a strong Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibe radiating from the movie. And the idea of clandestine resistance fighters taking on hidden-in-plain-sight supernatural interlopers is a concept on loan from any number of John Carpenter flicks, from They Live to Princess of Darkness to Vampires.
Of course, we don’t see any blood spray or shredded demon limbs in the Netflix feature. But the idea of sword-swinging heroines battling the forces of darkness — and often defeating hundreds upon hundreds of monstrous bad guys at a time — has been a tradition in Asian horror for decades now. If you’re looking for a distaff live action adaptation of KPop Demon Hunters, you might as well dig up an old copy of Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness … which came out all the way back in 1995. And of course, if I were to list all of the anime features about unlikely female characters dispatching wave after wave of demonic forces all by themselves, this website would have to order more bandwidth.
Thematically there’s nothing all that new about what KPop Demon Hunters does. We’ve seen the same gimmick in scores of cartoons, comics and video games over the years. But what it does do differently is tap into today’s cultural zeitgeist. It’s a film where the most evil entities in existence decide to destroy mankind via a flashy musical act and smartphone videos. Ultimately, KPop Demon Hunters is a movie about consumerism, technology and mass media all coming to a head and threatening humanity under the guise of entertainment. And clearly, there are no real world parallels for THAT, are there?
The success of KPop Demon Hunters has been attributed to a lot of things. Great animation, fantastic music, excellent voice acting, a punchy script. All of those things are true, but the key thing that makes it different is its message about identity. In case you haven’t seen the movie yet, be forewarned: I’m about to enter spoiler territory, and I’m entering it hard.
So the “leader” of the group is a character named Rumi. She’s feeling a bit conflicted because, despite being a demon slayer responsible for the deaths of countless monsters, she’s actually half demon herself. And the last thing she wants is her best buddies and demon-murdering partners Zoey and Mira discovering her deepest, darkest secret. You can read a LOT of subtext there, and pretty much any fill-in works with the film. The real conflict in the movie isn’t the turf battle between HUNTR/X and The Saja Boys, it’s the battle Rumi faces from within. I think everybody can relate to her struggle, to some extent. We’re all hiding *something* from the people who mean the most to us and self-denial can eat you alive in no time. Maybe calling KPop Demon Hunters a “psychological” horror film is REALLY grasping for straws, but when you drill down to the essence of the movie — it isn’t a totally untrue label, either.
It’s kind of an anti-Disney movie, in a lot of respects. It’s a film that tells you The Saja Boys are evil upfront, where most animated movies these days would’ve kept it as a last-second plot twist. Furthermore, the Saja Boys actually get a little bit of characterization and development as the movie progresses. It’s a movie that muddies the waters of “good versus evil” quite a bit, with a fairly interesting and unexpected moral about redemption and forgiveness tucked in towards the climax. All three HUNTR/X characters, in a VERY liberal interpretation of the term, are technically “final girls.” There’s a lot of unspoken trauma going on in this movie, and if you pay very close attention you might stumble upon some shockingly deep existential commentary in between all of those awesome songs.
If KPop Demon Hunters isn’t explicitly a horror film, it’s at least a firm horror-adjacent one. It’s kinda’ in the same ball park as something like Ghostbusters or Beetlejuice, in the sense that it’s not exactly meant to be scary, but you can obviously see the horror of certain elements and situations in the films. Somebody could easily make a “hard” horror version of KPop Demon Hunters, with ample gore and special effects and severed limbs. But the material just seems to work better in a lighter, softer and airier package.
It’s easy to sleep on a movie like this or even overlook it completely as hokey “kid stuff.” But there’s a lot more to KPop Demon Hunters than meets the eye, especially if you’re a well-versed horror fan with a keen eye for subtle (and not so subtle) homages to any number of foundational Asian horror classics (including stuff like Jigoku and Onibaba, which are definitely aesthetic influences on the designs of some of the characters.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if KPop Demon Hunters becomes a key “gateway” horror movie for Gen Alpha, the same way Millennials were introduced to the genre by films like Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Ernest Scared Stupid. And if you’re STILL holding out on the movie and unwilling to give it a fair shake? I’d advise booting it up on Netflix sometime … I think it’s going to surprise you, in a lot of different ways.
