I swear I almost watched KPOP DEMON HUNTERS before it was a big deal. Some of the guys in the Action For Everyone circle were talking it up when it first hit Netflix last summer. During the time I put it off it became a cult phenomenon, then just a mainstream hugely popular thing that all children know about and that honestly I’m sick of hearing about. I’m very aware of how uncool it is for me to watch and/or review it at this late date, but I’m the type that is so cool that it doesn’t faze me to be uncool. So I will admit that my mother-in-law watched it before I did. That’s how cool I am.

I’m sure most of you know this, but in case you don’t, this was a movie made by Sony Pictures Animation (makers of the SPIDER-VERSE and HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA series), but I guess they got cold feet about releasing it and just sold it to Netflix, where luckily it somehow became the rare streaming movie to actually make a mark. It got so popular by word-of-mouth that two months later they did theatrical screenings of a sing-along version and it was the #1 movie for the week. The soundtrack is certified platinum and nominated for five Grammies, and I think the movie is basically guaranteed to win the best animated feature and best original song Oscars, even with SINNERS competing for the latter.

I don’t really get why it’s that big of a deal, but I liked it. A couple minutes into the prologue I was definitely sold on the premise: the human world has always been at war with the demon world, who steal our souls to empower their king Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun, I SAW THE DEVIL). But every generation there is a trio of warriors “born with voices that could drive back the darkness.” They’re not only trained to fight, but to use the power of singing to create a protective barrier called the Honmoon. Their music “ignites the soul and brings the world together,” generating powerful magic, with the ultimate goal of creating an impenetrable “Golden Honmoon” that would block out demons forever.

So you see where this is going – in the modern world, such warriors have to be pop idols. It’s kinda like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets, uh… BEYOND THE LIGHTS? Jem and the Holograms? I don’t know. Something about super famous pop stars. The hunters for our era are a chart-topping trio known as Huntrix, made up of Rumi (Arden Cho, THE BAYTOWN OUTLAWS), Mira (May Hong, from the excellent Soderbergh mini-series Full Circle) and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo, FREAKY TALES). (Singing voices provided by Ejae, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami and Lea Salonga.) They’re a good set of leads with very different looks and personalities, and Mira is my favorite because she’s the tall, pouty, droll one.

We get to experience their luxurious celebrity lifestyle, but also they have to deal with stuff like the crew on their private jet are acting weird so they figure out they’re demons and have to slice them up with glowing swords and skydive into their concert. The premise is a good excuse for the fight scenes to also be musical numbers.

Huntrix are mentored by a former hunter named Celine (Yunjin Kim, SHIRI), who raised Rumi and is the only one who knows her secret that she’s half-demon. Not proud of it, though. Like Blade. Lately she’s been losing her voice and having to cover up to hide that the tattoo-like patterns of a demon are beginning to appear on her skin. Though the others are excited to take a break after their big tour, Rumi rushes to drop their new single “Golden” in hopes it will be popular enough to create the Golden Honmoon and stop her transformation.

(Wait – shouldn’t they be going for a Certified Platinum Honmoon?)

Meanwhile in Hell or wherever, Gwi-Ma is sick of his incompetent demons losing. One of his troublemaking minions, a former human named Jinu (actual K-Pop star Ahn Hyo-seop), proposes some demons going to earth in the guise of a boy band. So he becomes the leader of the Saja Boys, who have the goofy names Romance Saja (Joel Kim Booster, FIRE ISLAND), Mystery Saja (Alan Lee), Abby Saja (SungWon Cho, BLACKBERRY) and Baby Saja (Danny Chung).

(Singing voices: Andrew Choi, Samuil Lee, Kevin Woo, Neckwav).

The Saja Boys show up out of nowhere and cause a scene by performing a catchy song in public and being aggressively dreamy/hunky. There are really funny uses of slow motion, soft focus and music. The Huntrix gals have instant crushes followed by competitive jealousy and plans to kill them because they’re obviously demons.

By the way, have you considered that the title could mean it’s about K-Pop stars who hunt demons, but it could also mean it’s about people who hunt K-Pop stars that are demons? Both are accurate descriptions! Double meaning!

The girls set their minds to writing a diss song to beat the Saja Boys at “The International Idol Awards” that will determine whether they save the world or not. Meanwhile, the human-turned-demon and the half-demon hunter have some sympathy for each other that turns into a slow burning secret romance. So of course there’s suspense about whether he’s sincere or not, when the other two will find out she’s a demon and how they’ll feel about it, whether she’ll find peace with her heritage, whether it’s even right for her to block out all the demons. Plenty of drama to keep things interesting.

KPOP DEMON HUNTERS was conceived by Maggie Kang, who also makes her directorial debut after years of being a story artist/storyboard artist on various SHREK things, RISE OF THE GUARDIANS, KUNG FU PANDA 3, etc. Her co-director Chris Appelhans did designs for what I would consider more interesting movies (MONSTER HOUSE, CORALINE, FANTASTIC MR. FOX) but had only directed WISH DRAGON. So this is quite a leap for both of them. It’s another computer animated feature with a visual style that I can’t imagine existing without the success of SPIDER-VERSE, but it’s hardly an imitator. The character designs look a little different from other studio product, and I love how their faces can switch to cartoony anime-style exaggeration for comic effect. There’s an amazing gag where Zoey is so impressed by Abby’s abs that her eyeballs turn into abs which then turn into corncobs which then explode into popcorn which she and Mira then start to eat. Tex Avery physics.

It also has good monster designs that are pretty novel for American animation because many are based in Korean mythology. The blue tiger and six-eyed hat-wearing bird who deliver messages to Rumi are obvious highlights.

Like many of the big budget cg movies it’s very impressive in its level of detail – so many costumes, settings, realistic lighting schemes, all carefully modeled in a computer. So much work was clearly put into the different types of fashion (from stage attire to pajamas to hair styles), dance moves and acrobatic fight choreography. Of course this one is also packed with all the trappings of commercial music: glimpses of videos, commercials, billboards, subway wraps, holograms, talk show appearances, Instagram reels, fans lining up for signings, crowding arenas and outdoor stages, gathering around phones watching live streams, lighting their cell phones in arenas, screaming, crying, clutching shitty merch, holding up signs, chanting, all that.

I really enjoyed KPOP DEMON HUNTERS, but I think I’m colder on it than most just because of my feelings about the world it’s set in. I’m not trying to be a wise guy here by saying an unpopular/old guy thing about the music, but here it is. The music is very good in the sense that it’s exactly what they want it to be and works for the characters (and is beloved by children). But also I personally hate this kind of music and can not remotely relate to the urge to listen to it outside of the movie.

I know nothing about K-Pop, but this is not in Korean, and to me it’s exactly the same as a type of modern American pop music – talented singers polished and produced and chopped and computerized into aggressively generic electro dance American Idol vocal chop demo reel with rap parts. This is really the only negative thing I have to say about the movie: that although depiction does not equal endorsement I do feel it is a celebration of a thing that kinda grosses me out, the whole “Idol” world of music as game show, as lottery ticket to celebrity, rather than as art. This is a musical, so emotions are expressed in the lyrics as a matter of storytelling, but it does not seem as if any of the singers ever think about their music as a form of self expression.

To be fair, they got the demon hunting to worry about. To them making the most widely popular music possible serves an important world-saving function. But it also intentionally overlaps with the whole idea of the “idol,” where the goal is to be famous, to live a life of glamour and adulation. Though this is a better cartoon, it makes me think of something we grew up with, Beverly Hills Teens. The cartoonish fantasy of “what if you had all the money in the world and a limo with a hot tub in the back?” I’m sure it’s mostly harmless for kids to want to be an idol when they grow up, no more serious than wanting to be a cowboy or ninja, but I’m not the only adult enjoyng this thing, so I can judge it from an adult perspective. I don’t like watching somebody purposely try to create the most popular music. It’s a fantasy about music where only the most superficial aspects of music are important. “You can’t even dream a whole dream, can you?,” to quote THE HOLDOVERS.

There’s arguably some critique there about celebrity worship (idolatry, you might say!) in the scene where the Saja Boys perform in their true form. The fans take it as fun theming and stagecraft, but they’re literally participating in demon worship. It’s also interesting in a meta way that the very concept of girl groups and boy bands is prefabrication – calculatedly casting members to fulfill parts of a formula for maximum commercial appeal – and they sort of do the same thing to create an appealing cast for a cartoon. But I don’t know, it feels to me like 100% celebration. I think we’re supposed to chuckle a little bit at the fans working themselves into a frenzy over this shit, but mostly think it’s fun and cute.

I’m not fluent in music criticism, but I’m vaguely aware of the concept of “poptimism,” which to my understanding is a school of thought coming out of Pitchfork (which I must admit I never read), pushing back against a bias critics used to have against mainstream pop music. Obviously I sorta agree with that because with Seagalogy and my writings about DTV movies and what not I argued that anything could be worth serious analysis no matter who it’s meant for or how much it’s looked down on. But it seems to me some people have mutated that idea into a view that albums by the most popular music celebrities are by definition important and must be respected. I’m not gonna get too mad about it because that’s the music they love and they’re taking it seriously, that’s their business. I’m just saying they haven’t convinced me there’s any reason I should give a shit about some of this. Beyonce – yeah, I agree that she’s making interesting art. Taylor Swift – I’ll take your word for it. This – I don’t know, man. Maybe I was too hard on the LION KING soundtrack.

Let me go back to when I was a kid, or a teenager at least. I personally had a kneejerk rejection of music I perceived to be mainstream and popular. Top two singles of the year I graduated high school: “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and “Whoomp! [There It Is]” by Tag Team. If those were the favorite songs of somebody my age I sure wasn’t friends with them. I used “top 40” as a negative description of a type of music I would never listen to, and I still generally don’t, but eventually I chilled out and realized that some of the things that are hugely popular become that way because they’re just good. Stevie Wonder and Prince are my g.o.a.t.s and although they never had to compete for applause on a fucking game show both of them had periods of selling the most records, filling the biggest stadiums and winning Grammys, including during the times when they made some of their best music. So I guess what I would prefer would be Prince and the Revolution Demon Hunters. They make very popular music that is also weird, innovative, funky as hell, deeply moving, could not have been made by anybody else, would still be great even if it didn’t create a barrier to protect the world from demons. Also I’d like to see the eccentric home studio prodigy demon hunters. Maybe they have a hard time demon hunting because nobody’s ever heard of them so their magic is weak, but they don’t give a fuck because they’re doing what they want to do.

And hey, you know what, that brings me to a

SPECIAL BONUS MINI REVIEW: BOYS GO TO JUPITER

The other day I watched a completely different type of recent computer animated feature with a catchy soundtrack. This one isn’t really for kids (though it could possibly get a PG rating) and it definitely has no interest in being a pop culture phenomenon. It’s extremely odd, with unique comedic rhythms, a dreamy lo-fi synth-pop soundtrack and (the best part by far) a one-of-a-kind visual style.

It centers on a teenager named Billy 5000 (NPR’s Jack Corbett). He doesn’t have as much time as he used to to hang out out with his little brother Peanut (J.R. Phillips), neighborhood shirtless mullet-haver Freckles (Daily Show correspondent Grace Kuhlenschmidt) and beatboxer Beatbox (Elsie Fisher, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2022) because he started working for the food delivery app Grubster. He has a reputation as a math prodigy, and he’s trying to take advantage of a glitch he noticed in the programming to earn enough money to move out of his sister (Eva Victor, SORRY, BABY)’s house.

In the opening scene they find a weird worm creature on the beach, and later Billy will find a glowing ring creature he names Donut, so it’s partly about aliens. Also he makes deliveries, including one to former classmate Rosario Dawson (singer-songwriter Miya Folick), now calling herself Rozebud. She works at the Dolphin Groves Juice Factory, owned by her genius scientist mother (Janeane Garofalo, TITAN A.E.), who is rumored to be a dolphin mutated into human form by NASA experiments. Rozebud shows Billy some of her mom’s top secret lab-created fruits, and he steals a lemon covered in blue bumps to try to sell on the black market.

It’s not the same type of star-studded cast you get in a studio movie, it’s the kind where [adult swim]’s Joe Pera plays the owner of a dinosaur themed mini-golf course and comedian Demi Adejuyigbe plays a money guru Billy watches on Youtube. It’s also more about images and sounds creating tone and atmosphere than it is about plot. Basic shapes and blobs are cleverly put together to create a feeling of time and place – suburban Florida in the winter. Specifically it’s set between the day after Christmas and New Year’s Day, so the kids aren’t in school and have all day to rap at the beach or skateboard at the gas station.

Honestly I do appreciate many of the big mainstream animated features, the amount of work that goes into them, even (in some cases) the careful attention to crafting the strongest possible story in a normal crowd-pleasing sort of way. I would even admit that KPOP DEMON HUNTERS is overall a more entertaining movie than BOYS GO TO JUPITER.

But it’s also great that even in this time-consuming, technology dependent medium there can be true indie features like this, unique expressions for niche audiences, with stories that are random and vibes based. It’s nice to see the product of unlimited resources at the big studios, but this movie takes advantage of its limitations to create a hell of a cool look. The people are minimalistic like Playmobil figures, the textures are smooth, but there’s a beautiful diorama-like design to the settings, and thanks to modern technology the lighting looks very authentic, bringing a surprising amount of reality to such a stylized world.

How can I describe this? It’s kind of like early David Gordon Green filtered through the artist J. Otto Seibold (Olive the Other Reindeer). Or like alt-comedy Gumby, I guess? Other things it made me think of: [adult swim] humor, magazine illustrator design. Sure enough, I learned from writer-director-composer Julian Glander’s websight that he did a show for [adult swim] (Jonathan Pillows) and many illustrations for The New Yorker and other publications. Other projects include various comic strips, album covers and gifs, a Fantagraphics book, shorts for a Disney “microcontent program,” song visualizers, MTV bumpers, and Art Sqool, “An artistic fulfillment simulator for Nintendo Switch, Mac & PC.” His aesthetic always involves a carefully curated crudeness. In an interview with In Session Film he said, “The animation I’ve always been drawn to is the animation where you can see how it’s done.”

I can imagine other artists seeing this, feeling it’s somewhat obtainable, and wondering what sort of weird thing they could create on their computer with their friends. This is a good little movie, and a great big celebration of the personal, the idiosyncratic, the human. More room for movies like this, please.