I Quite Liked KPOP Demon Hunters (and yes, the soundtrack is on repeat loudly)
“You Wanna Get Wild? Okay, I’ll Show You Wild”
I was scrolling through the Netflix catalogue months ago and saw something about KPop Demon Hunters, rolled my eyes, and flicked over to watch something else.
And then it took off. TikToks and Instagram reels were filled with covers and dances, the soundtrack was shooting up the charts, and some friends were raving about it. Alright, let’s give it a go.
So, with the whole family tucked onto the couch, and with the sound system cranked, we saw it together.
And loved it.
The animation is slick (Sony really is on a roll with the Spidey universe and now this), the story had heart, and yes — their soundtrack is now playing very loudly in my car. I have to work very hard not to try and squeak out that notorious A5 note in ‘Golden’ in case my dash cam picks it up and I happen to have an incident on the road a few seconds later, thus recording the squeakiness of my voice forever. Don’t judge me.
Despite the highly unusual setup of the story, the thing that surprised me most was how wholesome it was. In a movie that could’ve gone full cringe or full chaos, there was restraint. The Huntrix girls are not sexualised (the Saja boys, especially Abby, has looks which are played off for laughs rather than being overtly sexualised), there are no cheap gags, and — unexpectedly — a thoughtful thread about shame, identity, and finding your voice. I didn’t expect to be thinking about Jesus by the end… and yet, here we are.
I’ve seen a few Christian takes on the film already, most of them landing somewhere between “don’t mess with demons” and “Satan wants your Spotify.” But I think there’s more going on — and more we can draw out. Not because we need to baptise every pop-culture moment with a gospel message, but because this one, in its own quirky way, was already pointing toward one.
So here are a few thoughts. Some serious, some just for fun. But mostly, this is a reflection on how KPop Demon Hunters taps into something real — and how Jesus is better than even the best KPop girl group with glowing weapons.
“So Refreshing… My Little Soda Pop - *pop*”
Before we get too deep into demons and theology, I just want to say — this movie was a blast to watch.
The animation is seriously slick. One minute you’re getting buttery-smooth action, the next there’s this manga-style (manhwa in Korean) pop-out on someone’s face to sell the moment. It gives the whole thing a punch of personality. It’s not just technically well done — it’s fun.
And visually? It’s a stunner. The colour palette is bold but not messy. It’s bright without being chaotic. It has that stylised, “animated KPop music video meets monster fight scene” vibe and it works.
The songs are catchy in the best (and worst?) way. Soda Pop should’ve been forgettable, just another sugar-coated pop track. But it’s been stuck in my head ever since. There’s enough KPop charm baked into it — little melodic turns, harmonies, production choices — that it genuinely holds up. My kids are singing it. I’m singing it. It’s a problem.
And I really liked the characters. For a movie this short, they’re surprisingly fleshed out. They’re fun, distinct, and none of them fall into the more recent “Mary Sue” trope. They’ve got flaws, get annoyed with each other, and mess things up. Which gives them room to grow, mature, have a proper (albeit rushed) character arc.
Which is probably one of my minor critical complaints, it’s that the movie’s over too soon. At just over 90 minutes, it feels like we just get to know the girls before it wraps up. I know that’s probably part of the experiment — a tight-budget, high-style movie released straight to streaming to test audience reaction. But still, I would’ve gladly watched another 20 minutes of backstory and character beats. That’s probably a good sign — you’re critical of the things they left out rather than what they put in.
Best of all, the movie feels like it transcends cultural lines. It’s not just a “Korean thing” or a Western anime ripoff. It taps into something more universal — the desire to be known, the fear of shame, the hope of standing up to something bigger than you. These kinds of stories land across cultures.
“I’m The Only One Who’ll Love Your Sins…”
For a movie with fluorescent demons and glittery (and surprisingly well-choreographed) battle sequences, KPop Demon Hunters is unexpectedly direct in one of its key claims: evil is real. Not just symbolic, not just metaphorical, not just “inner negativity” — but a literal, intelligent evil that schemes, deceives, and devours.
That worldview may seem jarring in a teen/young adult action-comedy, but it actually taps into something older and deeper than anime tropes. The film’s portrayal of the demonic draws heavily on Korean folklore, where spiritual beings like gwishin (ghosts) and ma (evil spirits) are believed to haunt, deceive, and feed on human fears or unfinished business. While these myths differ from the biblical account in origin and cosmology, there’s a striking overlap in the way evil operates:
deceptive
destructive
hiding behind beauty or sadness
feeding on the vulnerable
These stories, like many across cultures, carry echoes of the truth. They reflect a spiritual intuition — that there is something out there, beyond the material, that works against the good. And Scripture gives us the clearest lens to understand it. The Bible teaches that demons aren’t ghostly leftovers or lingering energies — they are fallen spiritual beings who rebelled against God and now seek to distort, deceive, and destroy what He has made.
And yet, KPop Demon Hunters often plays them off as cartoonish. The lesser demons are squishy, colourful, and frequently comedic. Even Gwi Ma, the big baddie and Satan-analogue, while visually imposing, is still a little on-the-nose: all fire and shadows, growling while lesser demons scurry about feeding him souls. There’s nothing especially surprising or chilling about him. You know he’s the villain because everyone is afraid of him and his voice is deep and booming.
Still — for all the cliché, the movie gets something important right: you don’t mess with the demonic lightly. These aren’t forces to flirt with. And while the film doesn’t depict possession per se, its central threat — that demons are after souls — is more theologically serious than we might expect. That’s not quite the biblical framework, but it gets close enough to remind us that there is more to evil than what we can see.
The Bible takes evil deadly seriously. Satan isn’t a cartoon. He’s called “more crafty than any other beast” (Genesis 3:1), a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44), and one who disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14 — the Saja Boys are essentially a literal boy-band version of this verse!). He’s not just out to scare us — he wants to deceive, distort, and destroy.
He doesn’t need to look evil to be evil.
Which is probably one of the more disarming and subtle points made by the movie — though I suspect speaking better then they intend: evil rarely looks or sounds evil.
This is why C.S. Lewis, in the introduction to The Screwtape Letters, offers one of the most helpful frameworks for modern people to think about demons:
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
Lewis goes on to remind us: the devil is a liar. Not everything he says about himself should be believed — especially the part where he claims to be unbeatable. He puffs himself up to seem powerful. But he is still a creature. Still limited. Still under judgment.
So what’s the risk in watching movies like KPop Demon Hunters? It’s not, I think, that they’ll send us off dabbling in the occult. It’s subtler than that. The risk is that we start treating the spiritual world with the same cartoon logic — as if demons were just another exaggerated trope, a background threat with a neon colour palette.
And yet — ironically — the movie still gets under our skin in some important ways. It reminds us that spiritual evil is real, deceptive, preys on fear and weakness, and that we can’t face it alone.
“Put These Patterns All in The Past Now, And Finally Live, Like The Girl They All See…”
One of the more moving moments in KPop Demon Hunters comes when the girls finally overcome their enemies — not through sheer power or better choreography, but by embracing who they are: Rumi in particular. She stops hiding her patterns, reveals them, embraces them, and so reclaims her voice.
It’s a message that lands, especially in Asian cultures where weakness is something to conceal, and where shame can cling tighter than fear. Perhaps the mother-figure, Celine, is a little heavy-handed with this messaging. She tells Rumi on numerous occasions that her patterns were shameful and need to be hidden, and that once her voice turns the Honmoon golden she’ll be healed of what brings shame.
It’s a familiar Asian gospel: hide your shame, work hard to overcome it, with the promise that security and significance are on the other side of this hard work.
In that sense, the film offers something genuinely uplifting: you don’t need to pretend to be someone else in order to do something good. You don’t need to hide in order to be accepted.
But as affirming as that message is, it still leaves something out.
The heart of the movie resolves around the idea that what saves you is your embracing your voice — your inner truth, your willingness to stop pretending. And while that might help someone step into the light for a moment, it doesn’t really deal with what drove them into the shadows in the first place.
Because what do you do when your “true self” isn’t that impressive?
What happens when you’re not just misunderstood, but genuinely in the wrong?
What happens when the shame you carry isn’t imagined — but deserved?
That’s where the gospel of Jesus offers something both more honest and more freeing.
Jesus doesn’t ask us to rescue ourselves by doubling down on self-expression. He doesn’t tell us to push through our shame or outshout it. He does something far more surprising: He bears it. Willingly. Publicly.
“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame...” (Hebrews 12:2)
The cross is not just where sin is forgiven — it’s where shame is unmasked, exposed, and ultimately undone. Jesus didn’t cover up to save us. He was stripped, mocked, and rejected — so that we never again have to wonder whether our weaknesses will drive Him away.
When you know your deepest failures have already been seen — and carried — by the One who loves you most, it changes everything. The shame that once kept you quiet begins to lose its grip. The fear that someone might find you out starts to shrink. Jesus saw the worst of you, and instead of walking away, He bore them on the cross.
That’s sacrificial, shame-bearing love — not just passive acceptance.
And that kind of love gives you a freedom that self-expression alone can’t offer. It’s not just the freedom to be “yourself” — it’s the freedom to be honest. To stop pretending. To name what’s true, even when it’s painful. Because the gospel says you are already known and still welcomed.
So instead of hiding behind filters, or perfection, or performance, you can step into the light. You can confess what’s broken. You can be transparent, even when it’s messy. You can live open-hearted in a world that still shames — not because shame is gone from the world, but because it no longer rules you.
Because if the God of the universe sees you, knows you, and still calls you His — you really have nothing left to prove, and nothing left to hide.
“The Song We Couldn’t Write, This Is What It Sounds Like”
I really enjoyed the movie, and I’ve been loving the soundtrack even more. The lyrics resonate with much of what our world believes, and sometimes, like the lyric above, they perhaps speak better than they know and point forward hopefully.
It’s a great line: the song we couldn’t write.
Because that’s what grace sounds like. Not something we earned, or performed, or finally managed to express. But something gifted, sung over us, and carried by another.
And once you’ve heard it, everything else starts to sound a little different.
If that’s a song you haven’t heard clearly before — maybe it’s time to turn the volume up.
