I’ll be keeping a watch out my window tonight for the lynch mob.

If you’ve been here for a little while, you know that I love cartoons. I was raised on Disney movies, My Neighbor Totoro, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and to this day I love finding good new cartoons and rewatching my favorites.

So when KPop Demon Hunters got big, I knew it was either going to be fantastic, or way over-hyped, with no wiggle room in between. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I enjoy the overly popular stuff; I was all over the Frozen craze when it first came out. But being a writer and editor, I can’t help but take stories seriously, whether or not they’re meant for kids.

Why? Because it’s helpful to deconstruct stories so we can better see how to construct them correctly, to determine what works and what doesn’t. And no, I’m not being too harsh by holding a kid’s movie to this standard. Plenty of stories made for kids have turned out not only to be entertaining and popular, but actually really great stories underneath. Think Disney classics like The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, book series like The Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter, or Studio Ghibli films like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Howl’s Moving Castle.

So without further ado, let’s dive into the good, the bad, the ugly, and the so-close-to-being-great of KPop Demon Hunters.

The Music

Let me start here, because if you’ve been around, you may know that I was a music major, and still teach and play music to this day. I know a thing or two about music and have lots of opinions on style—and I will admit that the music in KPDH is not my style.

Once modern pop music hit rap 20-odd years ago, I tapped out. I don’t keep up with the trends because modern music is just not interesting to me. Give me classical, jazz, or even rock through the early 2010s any day.

That being said, I went into this movie not ever having heard a lick of K-pop. Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The songs were catchy, and the lyrics were pretty solid for the most part—better than some of the recent disasters that Disney has been churning out. Will I listen to them on my own? No, but they’re good for what they are.

I will mention that I liked how the songs were a part of the story. They weren’t just “there” but actually related to the plot and characters, and sometimes affected them directly. This is my strongest point in favor of the movie. It’s always pretty cool when the “musical” part of a musical has an in-universe purpose.

The Story

Here’s where things start to break down for me. Within the first five minutes of the movie, I had lots of questions…and most of them never got answered.

The Setup

The two most important questions I thought for sure would be resolved were:

How did the demon hunters and the Honmoon originate?

How did the demon hunters know that the goal was to turn the Honmoon golden if it had never been done before?

These seemed pretty important to understanding the story world as a whole, but after a brief prologue, this wasn’t even touched on ever again.

Maybe you have the answers I need—if so, please let me know!

The Secret

Then there’s Rumi being half-demon. This is such a great plot point used poorly. Just imagine with me: What if Rumi’s heritage stayed hidden from the audience until later in the movie? They could have introduced a precedent for half-demon humans (as it seems very unlikely Rumi is the only one in all of history), had the group encounter a half-demon human and show their hatred, and then reveal Rumi’s secret. It would have been insanely shocking and incredibly memorable.

As it turned out, this secret was given away much too cheaply to the audience.

The Problem

Why does Rumi’s voice start going away? She’s obviously had an issue with her heritage her entire life—why does it start right then, and why is it linked to her voice? Who knows, because it’s never fully explained!

This main problem that kicks off the start of the movie is just plot convenience, but it didn’t have to be. There were a million explanations that would have made it gel with the story more. In fact, it could have helped explain some of the unanswered questions about the Honmoon itself.

There’s More…

I’m only within the first thirty minutes of the movie, but I could go on. My biggest quibble is there’s not enough context. There are too many things that don’t add up or are never explained, which cheapens the story and makes it feel like a string of conveniences rather than a narrative that builds on itself.

I’ve brought this up (nicely, I promise!) with fans of the movie when they ask what I think about it. They’ll insist “You’re supposed to infer _______!” But the funny thing is that no one has had the same inferences, which simply proves my point.

With just a touch more worldbuilding effort, the foundation of this movie could have been so much stronger.

I can’t be the only one with unanswered questions, right? Right??

The Characters

Unused Potential

Rumi is a pretty solid main character. Her core of her conflict is real and relatable, and you inevitably want to cheer for her.

However, I kept thinking we were going to get more of Mira and Zoey. I don’t think they should have been highlighted in the same way Rumi was—there obviously needs to be a single main character to focus on in a movie like this—but I do think they could have been more than two-dimensional characters. As it is, they can basically be summed up as the bubbly one with repressed anxiety and the serious one who’s too judgmental. I was more interested in them over Jinn, whose story I think was a bit exaggerated.

While Jinn was a key part of the story, his relationship with Rumi was too brief for me to really believe it or care very deeply about him. It feels like they talked two times and then were in love—and I know, I know, every Disney movie is like that, but it’s different when the love interest’s character is actually prioritized, but not used well. He was incredibly wishy-washy to the point that his sacrifice at the end didn’t feel fulfilling, or even necessary.

The Most Important Character…?

My biggest gripe with the entire movie was the character of Celine. We hear secondhand through a vague reference that she’s kinda controlling, we see a quick example through a phone call, and then, the very first time we actually see her in person, it’s like the very climax of Rumi’s character depends on her chewing out Celine???

I was so confused that I got up and started yelling incredulously at the TV (you can ask my husband). Yeah, the story suggested that Rumi had beef with Celine about how she was raised—but nothing ever insinuated that her definitive character growth depended on her confronting Celine. And this scene is supposed to be the big one that compels the main character to face the climax, the start of the culmination of the entire movie.

And how much of the movie has Celine been in, or even referenced in? Like…one percent? If that? And suddenly she’s the person who will propel Rumi into the fight of her life?

I was so bewildered by the way this played out. It felt so unnatural that I couldn’t fully pay attention to the actual climax of the movie because I was trying to puzzle out what just happened. Narrative-wise, it didn’t make any logical sense.

Was anyone else confused here, or is it just me?

Almost There

With just a little more effort put into the worldbuilding and characters, this story could have been solid rather than being riddled with holes. Do I think every single thing needs to be explained in a story? Not at all. But this movie had so many gaps that it kept pulling me out of the story—and that’s when a story is no longer doing its job.

The good thing is there’s a place in our hearts for stories that might not be the best, but make us feel nostalgic, or even make us feel seen. KPop Demon Hunters wasn’t that movie for me, but it is for a lot of people. And I can get behind that, as the overall message of light and love conquering the darkness is one I support.

What did you think of the movie? Do you have any favorite stories that may be a bit flawed, but are dear to your heart anyway? I’d love to hear about them!

Happy storytelling!
—E.J.

Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

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