KPop Demon Hunters is Okay, I Guess

The first time I heard about KPop Demon Hunters, it was from my best friend who gave the film glowing praise. The second time I heard about it, it was from a Bluesky thread panning its poor writing. It’s odd for a kids’ movie to get this kind of polarized attention from adults, so I watched the thing and found it to be a mixed bag: the plot is little more than a first draft, with multiple dropped threads and a muddled central allegory that tries to represent too many things at the same time. Despite this, I found myself entertained for the film’s entire 90-minute runtime – there’s a strong sense of humour and tone that, on top of tight pacing, makes KPop Demon Hunters an easy watch. Moreover, there are some interesting musical moments that will be the focus of the rest of this essay.

               Proficient songwriting is the backbone of KPop Demon Hunters, and it is a sturdy backbone indeed. The film’s seven songs are each appropriate for their role in the story, and there are some classic Broadway musical tropes here: you have the number that introduces the protagonists (How It’s Done), a variation on the “I want” song (Golden), a song exploring the antagonist’s motivations (Your Idol), and, of course, a song where the protagonists come into their own having overcome previous conflicts (What It Sounds Like). Something I find fascinating in KPop Demon Hunters is that many of these songs pull double duty in the film’s plot: for instance, Golden introduces two interconnected conflicts (the hunters’ unattainable standards for themselves/Rumi’s shame about her demon heritage), and What It Sounds Like manages to make sense out of the film’s distended allegory through a brilliant juxtaposition of related ideas. Following that, what I’d like to do in this essay is go through a few songs and discuss how they relate to the film’s core themes, starting with:

How It’s Done

               How It’s Done is the song on this soundtrack that I most enjoy outside of its context in the film, mostly due to its beat, Rei Ami’s rapping, and EJAE’s utterly captivating vocal performance. What I’d like to focus on here, however, is its rhythmic profile: How It’s Done switches between an aggressively straight eighth-note feel and a groovy, almost-swung feel. This shift is most noticeable between the first pre- and post-choruses, and outlines a hemiolic relationship between the two styles that I find absolutely intoxicating:

How It’s Done notation of pre-chorus

How It’s Done notation of post-chorus

On the lyrics side of things, I find the lyric “fit check in our napalm era” to be an extremely odd piece of character development. It’s clear that it’s supposed to indicate a casual or bloodthirsty attitude on the part of the protagonists, but it has some disturbing implications considering the historic use of napalm to burn crops and devastate ecosystems. It’s a moment of extreme darkness in an otherwise-lighthearted hype song, and while it matches Zoey and Mira’s zest for demon-killing which becomes relevant to the plot later on, I think it most closely relates to a brief shot after the end of the song which shows hordes of demons uncomfortably confined below the ground by the Honmoon. To me, this lyric suggests that the girls see the Honmoon as a weapon of mass destruction against demons, who are clearly shown to have some form of moral personhood at certain points in the film.

All of this leads me to discuss one of KPop Demon Hunters’ dropped plot points: the saving of demons. It’s made clear throughout the film that demons become demons either through evil acts or through parentage, and the final confrontation even shows a demon, Jinu, being redeemed through a selfless act. We also see Rumi trying to converse with demons in one scene, causing friction between her and her bandmates. Thus, the reference to napalm seems to indicate an overzealous hatred for demons on the part of the band, and, further, a good reason for Rumi to keep her demonic parentage hidden. From this I infer that whatever orthodoxy raised the girls to become demon hunters inculcates deep hatred for its enemies and ruthlessly stifles dissent or different ways of life: there’s a parallel here to Christianity’s narrow path of righteousness which is difficult to ignore given developments later in the film.

Unfortunately, these ideas are given very little air in KPop Demon Hunters, which makes the comparison of demonic patterns to shame, addiction, and even queerness deeply suspect. In the world of KPop Demon Hunters, redemption for demons seems to be based entirely on circumstance, and most demons (read: addicts and queers) can obviously be destroyed without any moral compunction. It’s quite an odd message to get from an otherwise happy-go-lucky kids’ movie.

Golden

               Golden has, hands down, my favourite instance of text painting in this movie, and it’s my favourite because it speaks to me as a musician. I’m talking about this moment:

Golden notated excerpt

               This musical figure precipitates a major plot development – Rumi’s demonic heritage interfering with her ability to sing – but it’s also, like, extremely difficult. There are two huge melodic  leaps, the second of which lands on a piercing high A which only a handful of singers in a pop/rock style can manage, especially on a less-than-friendly vowel like the “ee” in “be.” Given the musical context, the theme of unrealistic expectations becomes painfully clear: any professional singer would be forgiven for having trouble with this line. Further, it seems appropriate that these ultra-high notes land on the words “born to be,” suggesting that Rumi’s “birthright” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I wish Rumi’s vocal troubles weren’t one of the many conflicts that get resolved off-screen in KPop Demon Hunters, because they are established in a painfully effective manner (literally – singing this stuff without proper technique hurts!)

               One other cool thing about Golden is its hook which feels totally incongruous with the compound-meter groove of which the song is built. This is because the opening is in 3/2 (three groups of four eighth notes) while the rest of the song is in 12/8 (four groups of three eighth notes). Consider the notation below: in 3/2, the melodic figure makes sense. It’s syncopated – the accents, represented by the highest note of each group, are on beats 2, 4, and 6 instead of the expected 1, 3, and 5 – but the half-note groupings can be clearly heard. If notated in 12/8, the melody becomes nearly incomprehensible: accents are arranged higgledy-piggledy on various subdivisions, from the third eighth note of the first beat to the first eighth note of the third beat to the second eighth note of the fourth. The first example is relatively easy to perform, while the second is quite difficult – even I, a woman who became known in undergrad for correcting bandmates who were playing rhythms wrong, had to practice it a couple times before getting it right because it simply does not fit in the groove.

Golden opening hook notated in 3/2 meter

Golden opening notated in 12/8 meter

               In my view, this rhythmic incongruity – that is sure to throw off any casual listener – foreshadows Golden’s darker moments (“I’m done hidin’” […] Our time, no fears, no lies”). The band – or possibly the entire dynasty of musical demon hunters – is not quite moving in sync. Moreover, the contrast between straight eighths and the “swung” compound meter builds on that found in How It’s Done, solidifying a kernel of musical meaning which, while subtle, contributes to the film’s strongest and best-developed themes. Unfortunately, like many other elements, this cool musical trick doesn’t appear later in the film.

Takedown

               I personally enjoy listening to Takedown, but its lyrics highlight a tonal dissonance within KPop Demon Hunters that bothers me somewhat. We hear our first explicit religious reference (“’Cause I see your real face and it’s ugly as sin”), once again drawing a comparison between the hunters and the Catholic Church. Further, the lyric “a demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live” feels extremely heavy-handed to the point that it challenges my suspension of disbelief. Once again, I think this is the intended response – the audience is supposed to empathize with Rumi and recognize that even a purported enemy is human – but its claims are never refuted by the plot. In fact, the demons themselves have a wildly inconsistent visual language: the gulf between memorable bespoke designs like the Saja Boys and the untextured gray placeholder zerglings is so wide as to challenge one’s suspension of disbelief. I’ve already discussed the thematic problems with the demons so I won’t rehash that here, but despite the fact that I like the song itself, it carries with it tonal baggage that the movie never truly resolves.

Your Idol

               Listening back to Your Idol, I was surprised at how it places religious imagery to the fore. In the opening bars we hear the first few notes of the Dies Irae, a famous Gregorian chant often used to signal doom or disaster in film scores. we hear the idiom “preaching to the choir” in the chorus, as well as a pre-chorus echoing Christian feelings of guilt after sin: “You know I’m the only one who’ll love your sins/Feel the way my voice gets under your skin.” Finally, we hear a reference to Biblical end times (“Watch me set your world on fire”) and a demand for the listener to kneel in supplication: “You’re down on your knees, I’ma be your idol.” I haven’t even touched on the double meaning of the word “idol” as a reference to famous pop artists and the “false idols” whose worship is forbidden by the Ten Commandments. Alongside these religious pronouncements, we hear lyrics that seem to refer to addiction: the first verse, “Keeping you in check/keeping you obsessed/[…]/Anytime it hurts/play another verse/I can be your sanctuary”, reminds me of the litany of songs from the 90s about heroin addiction. This is confirmed in the second verse with “Don't let it show, keep it all inside/The pain and the shame, keep it outta sight.”

While the lyrics present these notions of guilt and shame heavy-handedly, the music itself doesn’t seem to match their fervor. These emotions don’t seem to emotionally register with Jinu, who plays a role more akin to a cult leader than a survivor of addiction/shame/whatever. While this makes a modicum of narrative sense in mapping onto the correct dramaturgical function – a villain singing about their impending victory just before the final confrontation – it weakens the song itself because the tone of the lyrics don’t match the music played alongside them. I, as a listener, don’t feel empathetic towards Jinu in this moment because he’s playing the role of the big bad, with his prior reservations against villainy seemingly forgotten. Moreover, this makes Jinu’s final redemptive character beat seem to appear out of nowhere: Your Idol severs the narrative thread of Jinu’s wavering faith in the necessity of his evil ways.

What It Sounds Like

               One of my biggest issues with the plot of KPop Demon Hunters is that there is virtually no time given between the low point (Rumi being cast out by her bandmates) and the final confrontation. To me, it feels like there’s a gulf separating these two emotional states that isn’t quite bridged by the final song, but boy howdy does What It Sounds Like do its darndest to make it work. The opening verse gives us a response to Your Idol acknowledging its Christian guilt (“Nothing but the truth of what I am/The worst I came from, patterns I’m ashamed of”), then moves to basically cover all the film’s themes at once. We hear about queerness (“Why did I cover up the colours stuck inside my head,” i.e. rainbow flags), addiction (“I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back/But now I’m seeing beauty in the broken glass”), and belonging (“I should’ve let the jagged edges meet the light instead”). Further, the lyrics bring to mind the image of a stained glass windows (i.e. “colours,” “jagged edges”), cementing the idea of rebuilding after the destruction or rejection of a flawed ideal, once more drawing comparison to religion, particularly the Catholic Church.

I’ve brought up these references to Christianity before, but I don’t know if I can adequately express how tonally disjunct these moments are from the rest of the film: I almost laughed out loud when I heard the Dies Irae during Your Idol because the ideas it clearly referred to were so absurdly dark during an otherwise light and fun kids’ movie. Religious imagery and other adult topics simply aren’t treated in the movie’s dialogue and visual language with appropriate weight considering their outsized presence in the music: dark moments like Your Idol raise stakes in ways that the movie isn’t prepared to counterbalance, which leads to disappointing moments like Rumi overcoming her insecurities off-screen. This is what lies at the heart of the film’s problems: it’s clear that the songs of KPop Demon Hunters ends up doing thematic and emotional heavy lifting that the plot and dialogue simply can’t match. References to various tangentially related concepts (addiction, queerness, shame, self-love, religion/orthodoxy, etc.) appear ex nihilo in songs without being supported by the surrounding plot and dialogue, resulting in a tonally inconsistent film that lacks focus with songs that, while effective on their own, don’t seem to connect to the movie to which they’re attached.

               On the whole, though, KPop Demon Hunters is an entertaining piece of childrens’ media and a fascinating example of the different and oftentimes conflicting approaches involved in the creation of a multimedia work. The film tends to err on the side of having the songs make more sense on their own, which makes the individual songs more effective as standalone works but reduces the film’s emotional and thematic clarity. There are some instances of truly brilliant songwriting which don’t resonate as well as they could because of a rushed plot. In addition, some promising concepts (for instance, the film’s central allegory) fall flat because the songs write proverbial cheques that the rest of the movie simply can’t cash. There are some aspects of this film that I truly enjoy, and a lot of things about it that I find incredibly disappointing, and I hope that, given more time and funding, creator Maggie Kang can deliver a sequel that makes good on this instalment’s promise.

Every creative work is a compromise between multiple opposing forces, a multi-dimensional structure in which any excess weight on one axis can upend the whole assemblage. The creative’s most difficult task is to measure the effects of one end of a compromise versus another and determine the precise balance necessary to accomplish specific artistic goals. Ultimately, it’s up to each individual listener to decide whether the balance inherent to any creative work is effective, and it seems that, despite the problems I’ve discussed here, most people determined that this film made the right creative decisions. As such, the future seems fertile ground for more of HUNTR/X’s adventures in the world of KPop Demon Hunters.