By the time adulthood hits, pop culture is a fun distraction and occasional waystation for personal, passionate interest; when you’re a kid, it might as well be the whole world. Any parent would be forgiven for believing that KPop Demon Hunters was the only movie released all summer, playing on an endless Netflix loop at home, its songs soundtracking every trip to the grocery store. Monoculture might be dead amongst those old enough to sport a driver’s license, but anyone who left the house on Halloween night, or navigated their local multiplex during the film’s one-week theatrical roll-out, knows that the younger set are still fanning the flame. There’s no such thing as pushback against a tidal wave, and while directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans could never have predicted the sheer omnipresence of the surprise would-be blockbuster, their film comes fitted with a cagey defense system against detractors. To paraphrase the members of HUNTR/X, if you mess with KPop Demon Hunters, the movie itself will have to make you hurt. 

That threat may have been initially issued to the otherworldly fiends that our heroes mark as their enemies, but by the end of the year, it’s extended to the flick’s naysayers as well. Even the uninitiated likely know the story already; emerging from a long line of warrior songstresses, global superstars Rumi (voiced by Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong), and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) are finally at the precipice of banishing those ne’erdowells for good when a rival act emerges from the bowels of hell to thwart their plans. The Saja Boys, led by glowering heartthrob Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), have the earworm goods to beat HUNTR/X at their own game, setting a collision course in motion for the upcoming Idol Awards. As much as her collaborators would love to come out on top, Rumi has literal skin in the game, hiding her identity as a half demon in hopes that ultimate victory will scrub her secret clean before word gets out. They’ll have to hurry, as the Honmoon, the invisible, protective barrier between the lands of the living and the dead, is starting to weaken. They’ll tell you it’s powered by love and compassion or some other nonsense. In reality, it needs likes to survive.

We’ll get to Demon Hunters’ strange, unsettling relationship with fan culture soon enough, but you don’t become a phenomenon by simply insisting upon yourself. It takes determination and belief in the process, evinced with gusto by a movie that throws you straight into its yarn without a modicum of hesitation. Never shying away from a title that reads like a mad libs creation, Kang and Appelhans plunge the viewer directly into their odd duck universe, ploughing through most of the above description in under fifteen minutes’ time. There’s some attendant gaminess to the rules when storytelling is this hard charging, but Demon Hunters is wise to take the goofiness of its premise head-on. The what, why, and how are all a little fuzzy, but everyone involved is wagering that those things won’t matter when the bops start playing. They’re irrefutably, domineeringly correct.

This is easily the best collection of original songs since Encanto, if not Moana, though the soundtrack isn’t content with its station at the kids’ table. Musicals have experienced a small resurgence in the last decade or so, but just about all the true bangers have been adapted from the stage. La La Land, Wonka, and even Emilia Pérez have their advocates, though hearing one of their stand-alone numbers out in the wild would be such an anomaly that you’d be tempted to buy a lottery ticket. All-ages fare is better at permeating the zeitgeist, which only makes Demon Hunters’ decision to exclusively use the tools of the Billboard 100 all the more impressive. Soda Pop, Takedown, and How It’s Done, among others, don’t just inhabit the world of adult, radio-friendly singles; they dominate their competition, more catchy and enlivening than just about anything else currently on the airwaves. Then there’s Golden, a tune so irrefutable that tax payers and care takers have made it certified platinum with nary a youthful nudge. All that handwringing over 2025’s want for a Song of the Summer was done in bad faith; us grown-ups just didn’t want to admit that it came from a cartoon.

And a handsome, singular one at that, using the glitchy, more-is-more stylings of the Spider-Verse series as a springboard rather than a playbook. Kaleidoscopic and fleet-of-foot, the animation here mixes its modern, Americanized elements with Chibi riffs straight from the latest anime offering, a stew that would only be half as potent if it weren’t for the swoon-worthy character design. It takes a lot of courage to admit your attraction to a computer-generated entity, but the digitized players here are entirely too hot to deny, an optical accomplishment that feeds ideally into the story. The romance between Rumi and Jinu would only play for the tikes if those lovebirds were any less becoming, and the faux-live performances are given a sheen of verisimilitude by witnessing HUNTR/X slay hard enough to make Rihanna blush. They’re also enveloping, big, bright, and brash enough to turn any elementary school attendee into a concert-goer in the making, even if Demon Hunters is more concerned over their allegiance on social media than in the flesh.

Turning world famous pop stars into avatars of empathetic kindness is nothing new; Taylor Swift has practically built a career out of blurring the line between idol and confidant, and Beyoncé’s beyhive is set abuzz by their belief in her ineffable goodness. There’s just something queasy-making about bringing parasocial obsession into children’s entertainment, demanding half-baked minds to pledge allegiance before they even know the alphabet. HUNTR/X is willing to die for their sins, a magnanimous offer that loses a little luster when the movie refuses to let the two sides interact. There’s something honest in allowing all their acolytes to be subsumed into monolithic anonymity, but Demon Hunters wants you to know that Rumi, Mira, and Zoey’s perpetual sacrifice is made with you in mind, and is primarily fueled by your relentless support. Films dealing with the battle between good and evil usually situate the melee on known, tactile grounds, where victory depends on ethics, strategy, and skirmishes. Here, it’s more of a popularity contest, HUNTR/X and The Saja Boys either gaining or losing steam exclusively by virtue of subscriber numbers. Maybe the next generation isn’t spending too much time on their phones after all; if the fate of everything is so dependent on their loyalty to one industry plant or the other, they’d better choose wisely.

 This is, undoubtedly, too harsh a criticism for a flick whose baseline quality well surpasses most of its all-ages contemporaries, but if our real-life cultural icons have taught us anything, it’s that unchecked fealty only favors the empowered. Two things can be true, and praising Demon Hunters for its eccentric animation and roof-shaking soundtrack shouldn’t mean absolving its crimes of coercion. The movie, like Taylor, Beyoncé, and innumerable athletes and politicians, has already won; it doesn’t need your bended knee on top of all its sizable winnings. KPop Demon Hunters might have started out as the little engine that could, but it’s a full-blown locomotive by now, and taking it to occasional task shouldn’t be seen as an affront. Not every accusation against an adored, supreme entity should be met with a slew of pitchforks. That kind of zealotry is how we got here in the first place.