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Review: Kpop Demon Hunters – It was inevitable. First there was my Stateside colleague who came to Korea back in May to give a special lecture, texting me a couple of weeks ago to ask if I had seen the film and if I could recommend him any books about Korean demons. Then there were the Tornadoes (my twin nieces) singing (or trying to sing) the theme song from the film, “Golden.” I knew this was going to be another one of those cultural phenomena I would have to watch so that I could talk to my students about it in the upcoming semester. So, we sat down a week ago and put on the latest animated craze: Kpop Demon Hunters. Well, I say “sat down,” but in fact when the film started I was standing in the living room, feet wide apart and arms crossed in front of me. I was ready to dislike, or at least be annoyed by, the film. To my surprise, though, I was not annoyed (with a few minor exceptions I’ll get into later). To my even greater surprise, I found myself actually enjoying the film. It wasn’t a perfect film by any means, but it was fun.

I’ll start with a brief and spoiler-free summary of the plot, in case you haven’t seen it. The film opens with a quick history of the demon hunters, women throughout history who have fought to protect humanity from demons not only through combat but also through song; as their song inspires hope in humanity, it creates a magical barrier called the “honmoon” that keeps the demons at bay. For their part, the demons attempt to steal the souls of humans to feed their ruler, Gwi-Ma (whom I immediately recognized as being voiced by Lee Byung-hun). In present-day Korea, the hunters are Rumi, Mira, and Zoey, otherwise known as the K-pop girl band Huntr/x (pronounced “Huntrix,” not “Hunter X”). Mentored by former hunter and idol Celine, they are the most successful and popular group in the K-pop scene, and with each concert the honmoon (represented by neon blue lines that sweep out over the landscape) grows stronger. Their goal is to create a golden honmoon, a permanent barrier that will prevent demons from entering the human world entirely. When part of the honmoon turns gold at one of their concerts, they realize they are close and move up the release of their new single, “Golden,” in an attempt to complete their mission. Unfortunately, Rumi’s voice begins to give out, threatening everything they have worked so hard to achieve.

Meanwhile, in the demon world, a demon named Jinu proposes to a weakened Gwi-Ma that they fight fire with fire. With Gwi-Ma’s approval, he and four of his fellow demons form a K-pop boy band called Saja Boys. They make a splash with a surprise street concert in Seoul, immediately winning over fans with their voices and good looks. Huntr/x come upon the concert and—despite both Mira and Zoey being smitten—realize that they are demons because of telltale patterns on their skin that are apparently only visible to hunters. Despite their righteous fervor, they realize they can’t attack the demons in public. This sets the stage for a rivalry between the two groups that plays out on various stages and will ultimately lead to a showdown at the Idol Awards and a contest for the souls of humanity.

KDH is a pretty polished film. The animation isn’t groundbreaking, but it is well done in terms of both character design, locations, etc. There are some stylistic flourishes that were very effective, especially when depicting supernatural elements and the concert performances. As this is a film about battling K-pop bands, the music plays an important role. I will admit that I did find myself humming “Golden” after the film was over, but it is the only song that has stuck with me (I can still remember snatches of it a week later). This may be partly because I heard it more than the other songs—it is played twice in the film, and I heard it once before seeing the film. As for the rest of the music, I remember the narrative function played by each of the songs, but I don’t really remember the songs themselves. In the case of the Saja Boys’ songs, I suspect that this was deliberate; they are demons and have no souls, so it only makes sense that their music would have no soul, either. Granted, this could also all just be my horrible memory and the fact that my exposure to the music was limited.

As for the narrative of the film, it felt like standard Hollywood fare. I could see the twists coming a mile away, and the ultimate message of the story was predictably uplifting. Mind you, these are not criticisms. I appreciate a mind-bender as much as the next person, but I don’t believe that a film has to be unpredictable to be good. A few weeks ago, for example, we saw F1: The Movie (which I never bothered writing a review of). I could have told you every twist and turn in the plot from the very beginning, but I still enjoyed it and had a lot of fun. KDH was much the same: It followed a familiar formula, but it was an enjoyable experience. “Formulaic” doesn’t mean “bad” as long as the story and characters are done well.

And therein would lie my only substantial criticism of the film—not the story, necessarily, but the characters. The film clocks in at a svelte ninety minutes, and it all goes by at a pretty good clip. The positive side of this is that the film doesn’t wear out its welcome, but the negative side is that we get a little short-changed on character development. Rumi is a fully developed and explored character, but she is only one member of a three-girl band, and we are supposed to believe that the three are a team that could not function without all of its members. All we get of Mira and Zoey, though, are caricatures—Mira as the wild child and Zoey as the outcast weirdo. The shorthand is effective, but we never really get to know either character, so when the inevitable conflict occurs at the climax of the film, our view of the relationship dynamics feels a little myopic. We understand very clearly how Rumi feels about the situation, but it feels like we are watching Mira and Zoey from a distance—we are walled off from them and don’t get any view into their psyches. Similarly, Celine gets rather short shrift as well; we see how Rumi feels about Celine, but we only get a very brief glimpse into what Celine must have gone through. Again, we really only see this relationship from one side. Lastly, I think we could have gone deeper into the demons as well. I’ll come back to the demons later, but suffice it to say for the moment that they are more complex than we are first led to believe. The Rujinu (Rumi + Jinu) relationship explores this subject, but somehow it doesn’t extend to the other demons, except in one brief scene that goes by too quickly.

I’ll finish the review part of this entry with some terminology and other minor issues I wanted to discuss. Some of these were clever or amusing, while others were mildly annoying or confusing. None of these really change my opinion of the film, but as a speaker of Korean I wanted to comment on them.

I’ll start with the name of the demon boy band, “Saja Boys.” This is never explained, but it’s a clever name because “saja” can have multiple meanings. The most obvious meaning is “lion,” and the band’s marketing plays into this, with their symbol being a lion and their slogan being “Join the Pride!” But “saja” can also mean “messenger,” as in “jeoseung saja,” or “messenger of the afterlife”—essentially the Korean version of the Grim Reaper. Their demon forms confirm this double meaning, as they appear dressed in black with the standard black horsehair hat of the jeoseung saja. Given how they lean into the lion imagery, though, it’s unlikely that any of the characters in the film would ever pick up on the double meaning. It felt like an appropriate thing for demons to do—flaunt their true identity right under peoples’ noses.

I’m a little iffy on some of the other Korean names and terms, though. The king of the demons, for example, is called Gwi-Ma, which seems to be just a reversal of the characters in “magwi,” meaning “demon” or “evil spirit.” With the characters flipped around and arranged in an atypical order, it just feels... weird. I’m not sure why they felt the need to switch the characters when “magwi” is already a thing. If I had to guess, I would say it might have had something to do with another connotation of “magwi” This is how “Satan” is rendered in the Korean Bible; it’s possible that the filmmakers wanted to avoid any Christian connotations. This is somewhat ironic, given what I see as the Christian influences on the world of KDH, but we’ll come back to that later.

“Honmoon” also confused me. It is depicted in the film as a barrier of sorts, but given the context it clearly means something like “soul gate.” I suppose the Chinese characters could be different, but that seems like the most obvious translation. It makes a certain sense, in that a soul gate would be a portal through which souls might pass, and you might then want to close that gate. But the hunters don’t talk about closing the honmoon, they talk about creating or building it. You don’t usually create a door unless you have a barrier that you want to be able to pass through, so it seemed like a weird term for the concept. Maybe call it a “honbyeok” (soul wall) instead? I will admit that this doesn’t quite have the same ring as “honmoon,” though.

I’m not quite sure about the “hon” part, either. I translated this as “soul,” but it’s a little more complicated than that. In the traditional Korean view of the spirit world, a person’s spirit (yeong) is made up of two elements, the hon and the baek. The former is the yang element of the spirit that comes from heaven and controls the spiritual or mental functions of a person; the latter is the eum (or yin) element that comes from the earth and controls the physical functions of a person. These two combine together as a joining of heaven and earth, yang and eum, to create the spirit of an individual. When a person dies, the hon returns to heaven, while the baek remains on earth and eventually dissipates. However, if the baek is prevented from dissipating—say, the deceased’s grave is not properly tended—the baek may cause trouble for its descendants. That’s probably a lot to digest if you’re not familiar with Eastern philosophy, but the point is that “hon” is not 100% equivalent to “soul”; the latter is an inevitable domestication. Whatever the case, we know that the demons don’t have souls or hon, so if the point of the honmoon is to keep demons out of the human world, the “hon” part seems to be as much of a misnomer as the “moon” part.

I doubt American audiences had any problems with the above terminology. They probably also didn’t have a problem with the massive stadium for the Idol Awards appearing in a location where it could not physically exist (directly next to N Seoul Tower). These things niggled at me, but not too much, as this is a fantasy version of Seoul. I actually often forgot that the action was taking place in Seoul—not only because it was generally unrecognizable, but because everyone spoke English. I realize that this is a conceit that you often see in American films, where foreign characters will speak English and the audience just buys into the idea (this is called the “translation convention”). The problem is that it only works if you don’t break that illusion by, for example, having a character speak the foreign language that everyone else is supposedly speaking. This doesn’t happen in the dialogue, but it does happen in the songs, which include some lines sung in Korean. So... are we supposed to assume that the English is Korean and the Korean is English? It’s a little confusing if you stop to think about it (which I suspect you’re not supposed to do).

Another thing that niggled at me was the way the traditional doctor was presented in the film. We’re given to believe that he is part quack, part mystic—I don’t know, it just seemed to play heavily into stereotypes of “Eastern mystics.” But perhaps I am reacting too harshly to this. There were other stereotypes in the film, such as the ajumma (older women, although “ajumma” specifically refers to any married woman), but those were more amusing than anything else—mainly, I think, because the depictions seemed to come from a place of affection. There were some tropes borrowed from older Korean dramas that struck me the same way. Take, for example, the shoulder bump as a guy and a girl pass each other—filmed in slow motion and repeated from every angle you could possibly imagine (and some you probably couldn’t). This is how Rumi first meets Jinu, but it’s clear that the film is poking fun at the tired trope, and it’s a pretty funny scene. The “wrist grab” is another trope—where a girl starts to walk away and the guy grabs her wrist—that used to be way overplayed in dramas, and it appears here as well. This scene is a little more earnest, but it was still funny. It got a laugh out of me, at least. I think what makes most of these scenes (and much of the film) work is the fact that the film doesn’t take itself too seriously. I mean, how can it when its premise is basically that K-pop is the only thing protecting the world from demonic invasion? It pokes gentle fun at elements of K-pop culture (and Korean culture in general), but it does so from a place of love.

I suppose that’s enough for a review, scattered as it is. But I wanted to discuss one more thing before signing off today. I mentioned up top that I was ready to dislike or be annoyed by the film. Now, you might have assumed that it was the K-pop part that would annoy me—but you would be wrong. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of K-pop, but I also don’t hate it. There’s even some older K-pop that I like. No, it was actually the “demon hunter” part that I was ready to be annoyed by. I will admit that this was prompted by my colleague’s reaction to the film, when he asked me if I could recommend any books about Korean demons. As one folklorist to another, I explained that demons aren’t really a thing in Korean folklore and that any demons you see in Korean narratives are mainly the result of influence from Christianity. He also said that he recognized elements of Korean shamanism, which led me to believe that the film was about modern-day shamans hunting demons, which would have been absurd.

He wasn’t wrong that there are elements of Korean shamanism in the film—at least, there is one image of a tree hung with lengths of multi-colored cloth, which is something that is associated with shamanism. But we only see it twice in the film, both times in connection with Celine, and my impression is that she goes there as a way of getting away from the modern world and connecting with the spirit world. To be honest, it’s just an image vaguely associated with “traditional Korea” and not much else is made of it. There is no other indication that the hunters have anything to do with shamanism. In fact, thirty seconds into the film I realized exactly what the filmmakers had done: They had borrowed elements from Korean culture and tradition to create a completely new fantasy world. And I’m perfectly fine with that! This sort of thing happens all the time. In fact, my favorite fantasy novels, The Lord of the Rings, could be said to be the result of the same process. The only concern I have is that people—like my colleague—might see the film and assume that demons are an established part of Korean folklore. So, with that in mind, I’ll explain briefly how the Christian tradition of demons differs from the traditional shamanic worldview in Korea.

I’ll start by backtracking on something I said to my colleague: that demons aren’t really a thing in Korean folklore. Demons do exist in Korean folklore, as does a “King of Hell” (Yeomna Daewang)—but these come from Buddhist folklore. In this folklore, though, Yeomna is not a malevolent being but a judge of the souls of the deceased, and the demons are confined to the afterlife, where they torment souls found wanting. There have never been tales of demons crossing over into the world of the living, attacking human beings, and stealing their souls to feed to their king. Shamans have never been exorcists fighting against evil spirits; the very idea of “evil” spirits is heavily influenced by the good/evil dichotomy of the Christian worldview. Shamanism is about restoring and maintaining harmony between the human world and the spirit world, and that is generally achieved by finding out what the spirits want and then appeasing them.

This is not just an old tradition. Some years back, HJ had a string of bad luck when she injured herself several times in quick succession. One of our neighbors at the time suggested that we might want to hold a shamanic ritual, as HJ had obviously wronged a spirit in some way. And, yes, she was being completely earnest. Such a ritual, according to the shamanic worldview, would have allowed us to restore balance to HJ’s relationship with the spirits of her ancestors and thus prevent future calamity. In the Christian worldview, demons harm people because they are evil; in the worldview of Korean shamanism, spirits harm people because they (that is, the spirits) themselves feel they have been wronged. Spirits in Korean shamanism are more analogous to vengeful ghosts in the West, and in fact stories of vengeful ghosts have long been a popular genre here in both traditional folklore and modern media. No demons, though, except for what you see in Christian-influenced narratives.

That being said, I should clarify that the demons in KDH are not even demons in the Christian sense; they’re actually an amalgam of Christian and Korean ideas (this is the closest I will come to a spoiler here, but we learn this fairly early on). Christian demons are fallen angels—angels who supported Lucifer in his rebellion against God and were cast out of heaven with him—and thus innately spiritual beings. In the film, though, the demons did not originate as spiritual beings—they were once human. When people are at their lowest point, Gwi-Ma will whisper in their ears, promising to make things right and give them everything they’ve always wanted. Presumably, if they live the life Gwi-Ma gives them, he claims their souls when they die and turns them into demons. At least, that’s how I imagine it must work; we don’t really get a clear picture of what happens in the film. This is partly what I meant when I mentioned above that I would have liked to see more development of the demons. We do sort of see how things work through the character of Jinu, but he seems to be an exception to the rule. What about the other demons? Are they just cannon fodder? As I mentioned above, the film makes a gesture toward addressing this in one brief scene with Rumi toward the end, but it is cut short and we move past it without ever addressing the issue again.

For the most part, though, we are led to share the hunters’ dim view of demons. This view is demonstrated effectively in the scene where Huntr/x come upon the Saja Boys’ surprise street concert. Given the public nature of the concert, the girls decide not to immediately attack the demons, and Rumi says, “A demon boy band? But why?” My first thought upon hearing this was: “Wait, what? You’re aware that it is your singing that is protecting humanity by creating the honmoon, and you really have no idea why the demons might want to interfere with that?” Of course, this is partly a case of dramatic irony—I had already witnessed the scene in which Jinu proposes the idea of a boy band to Gwi-Ma, so I was privy to information that Rumi didn’t have. Even without that, though, I’d like to think that I would have been able to piece together why the demons would want to form a boy band. The fact that Rumi couldn’t shows how one-dimensional her perception of demons is—she can’t imagine them doing anything other than attempting to steal people’s souls. The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife, but to discuss that I would have to delve into further spoilers, so I will refrain.

At any rate, like I said above, KDH is not a misrepresentation of Korean shamanism or any other Korean tradition, it’s a completely new fantasy world that draws on the imagery of Korean tradition. Again, I’m not only completely fine with this, I actually enjoy this kind of thing. Take the films of Miyazaki Hayao. Spirited Away, to give just one example, is a hodgepodge of folklore-seeming elements that isn’t actually (traditional) folklore at all. But I love that film and have probably seen it at least a dozen times, if not more. Not every novel, film, or TV show that evokes folklore needs to be a faithful and accurate representation of traditional folklore. We didn’t always feel this way, of course. Back in the mid-20th century, prominent folklorist Richard Dorson criticized what he called “fakelore” (such as the “invented” stories of Paul Bunyan). These days, folklorists take a somewhat less rigid view. Folklorists Michael Dylan Foster and Jeffrey Tolbert refer to commercial cultural products that evoke folklore and may drawn on folkloric elements but are in fact the invention of a solitary artist (or group of artists) as “folkloresque.” It is not something to be dismissed as fake or inferior, but something worthy of being studied in its own right, through a folkloric lens. As a folklorist, I do sometimes worry that people might confuse the folkloresque for traditional folklore, but I suppose that’s what we’re here for.

So, I’ll close by saying that I enjoyed KDH for what it was: a folkloresque film with an interesting conceit, good animation, catchy songs, and a fun story. Nitpicks aside, my major criticisms of the film all boil down to wanting to see more development of characters and themes, which I guess shows that I was invested in the story and characters. I can only wonder what my students will have to say about the film in the new semester (which begins tomorrow!).