Rumi (Voiced by Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong) and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) are Huntrix, the top girl band of the country. But they also have a secret, a secret rooted in their music, as their songs keep the demons from the netherworld ruled by Gwi-ma (Lee Byung-hun) at bay - more or less, but at this years Idol Awards they are to perform a song that's to close the gates to the netherworld for good. But then Rumi, lead singer of Huntrix, loses her voice. and of couse it's demonic doing as she is secretly half-demon, which not only her bandmates know. At the same time, a boyband called Sajar Boys is stealing their thunder, led by attractive Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop) - and they're of course demons. Eventually they get into a fight with the Huntrix girls, where´Jinu funds out Rumi is half demon, but chooses to keep her secret to himself, to use it against her later on. And from there on they now and again meet - on friendly terms even -, and romance develops, to a point where Rumi asks Jinu to help her and the band to win at the Idol Awards, and when he agrees to it, she believes him - only to be lured into a trap, as live on stage he reveals her demonic roots to her bandmates. Huntrix immediately break up, and Jinu announces for his band to do a spontaneous mega show this night to make up for the Huntrix split - which is of course only a ruse to open the gates to the netherworld for good. But at the concert, the three girls re-unite and sing their gate-closing song. Too late it seems though, as Gwi-ma is already on our level of existance, and he wants to shoot Rumi death with some demonic energy beam or something before she can finish her song. But of course Jinu is allowed to die a hero's death by taking the blow for Rumi, redeeming himself.

K-Pop Demon Hunters is basically a film that plays it incredibly safe, it takes everything from East Asian pop culture that has made it to Western mainstream - from titular K-pop to anime madness, sanitized and amerianized it a bit and sold it to a predominantly young audience as something fresh - and it worked, at least judging by viewing figures and cultural impact. Now this movie wasn't made for me, and I have to say it's not terrible. Of course, pretty much everytyng has been done before, and moslty done better, which makes not only the plot predictable, the CGI animation isn't really grreat, and the tunes are catchy maybe, but also pretty shallow pop tunes that aren't even designed to appeal to anyone over 20, but at least the story flows nicely, some of the humour actually lands and some setpieces are actually pretty exciting. Now in all, nothing to write home about, and definitely something that doesn't bear repeat viewing (at least to someeone from my generation), but then again not a total waste of time at least.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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