I’ve watch Kpop Demon Hunters 6 times now…

Have you seen it?

I think 6 is enough for now.

For the past couple of months I’ve been into the movie Kpop Demon Hunters and it’s soundtrack. I was initially so sceptical of this movie that I wrote it off. I thought it would be a lazy, cringey, ugly cash in. More than a decade after Gangnam style? After BTS and all the other popular acts? Too slow for hype. Genuinely, I am really happy that I was so, completely wrong.

KDH is a triumph. A masterclass in executing well on a concept that in the wrong hands would have been bad and flopped hard. It’s a film that comes from a place of genuine love and interest for Korean traditional culture and kpop, then melds that with rigorous additional research, and hires some of the best animators and musicians to make something that both looks and sounds great. I’m so pleased.

My only worry now is towards the future — that the same team won’t be given the time and budget to cook up a proper sequels, and it will be beaten to death by greedy, short-sighted corporate interests. Sony leadership in the past apparently believed so little in this film that they sold it wholesale to Netflix at a relatively marginal profit. Well, numbers prove that was a mistake. They accidentally handed Netflix their new number 1 most streamed original movie for cheap. And it’s nature as a family-friendly musical means, I predict, it will keep drawing views for months or even years.

Please don’t screw up the sequels. Give it time, give it budget. Give this same team the opportunity to show how it’s done, done, done.

In the end, it was a bit cringey. But it’s funny! There are some amazing visual gags that will be talked about for years. The ab-eyes turning into popcorn? Insane but amazing. And it has the ability to slow down, have some real emotion in there. Damn I was genuinely tearing up during the final song. Rare and high praise from me.

Both the film and the soundtrack are breaking records. So often over the last 10 or so years I’ve heard of executives in the movie and tv business making decisions that sound strange to me. Like selling this movie for just a $20 Million profit? If this movie had done even a fraction of what it got on netflix in theatre, there were potentially hundreds of millions left on the table here. That’s without even handing over the merchandising to Netflix too?

It’s an insane fumble from Sony’s perspective. I think it’ll go down as one of the worst deals in the movie business. At least in this whole decade if not of all time. Me and the rest of the audience are not the one’s out of touch here.

As I said I’ve watched it 6 times. 3 times in English, once more on the sing-along version. Once in Korean and once in Japanese. Some languages have covers of some of the songs in the language of the dub — so that was an added bonus. Unfortunately the performance in every language is not always up to scratch in my opinion. Oh well.

I’m not sure what else to say today. Just that if you haven’t seen it for some reason: give it a shot. Worst case you keep up with pop culture in just 85 minutes — it’s very short — arguably too short. But I think you’ll have a good time. Just for the price of a 1 month netflix subscription.

It’s vibrant, catchy with both entertaining heroes AND villains? Seems rare these days. The bad guys — the Saja Boys — are arguably too good at their job: they even had a chart battle with Huntrix in real life. Kinda funny.

Anyway, I feel like my interest is satiated for now and I’m moving on a little bit. That’s absolutely fine. Hopefully they’ll back with a great new movie and new album in a few years.

See you next time :)

-R