KPop Demon Hunters is a phenomenon. The animated musical has racked up more than 291 million views, making it the most-watched title in Netflix history. Its big single, “Golden,” currently holds the top spot on the Billboard 100.
Some of its themes, however, have disturbed Christian and conservative commentators.
“Not only are [the filmmakers] purposely drawing upon satanic and pagan themes, but they are also using this as a metaphor for an adolescent coming out of the closet,” Relatable host Allie Beth Stuckey warned.
Christianity Today editor Isabel Ong wrote that the movie expresses “our modern-day penchant for making monsters and demons safe — or cute or attractive or morally ambiguous,” and suggested that such content “might be creating a sense of spiritual ambivalence.”
The film does, of course, involve demons. It follows Rumi, Mira, and Zoey, who together comprise HUNTR/X (pronounced “huntrix”). This chart-topping pop trio is the latest in a millennia-old line of girl groups whose bond with their fans maintains an anti-demon shield known as the Honmoon. When the demon lord Gwi-Ma does manage to slip one through the barrier, the girls conjure up enchanted weapons and hack it to pieces while spouting girl-power pop lyrics.
To draw away HUNTR/X’s fans, Gwi-Ma dispatches his servant Jinu to form a rival boy band, the Saja Boys. Meanwhile, Rumi — secretly the product of a human-demon love affair — conceals that identity from her bandmates while struggling with romantic feelings toward Jinu. In one interview, co-director Maggie Kang explicitly compared Rumi opening up about her origins to coming out as LGBT.
Stuckey and Ong’s concerns are understandable but, I think, unfounded. A closer look at the film’s themes reveals that, regardless of what the filmmakers may have intended, KPop Demon Hunters is neither demonic nor gay. It is, in fact, pretty based.
The Power and Inevitability of Worship
One of the most profound aspects of the film is how pop concerts function as liturgies and even sacraments.
Among secular religion scholars, it’s become cliché to point out that stadium shows can produce the same “collective effervescence” that pioneering sociologist Émile Durkheim associated with religious worship.
But HUNTR/X’s concerts produce more than just feelings of unity and bliss. Their voices and the adoration of their fans actually strengthen the Honmoon, turning it from its baseline blue to a more robust gold.
Rumi and her bandmates serve much the same function as Christian priests, who offer the Eucharist “for the life of the world.” Some theologians even believe that sacramental Christian worship is the katechon St. Paul mentioned in 2 Thessalonians — the mysterious force that restrains the antichrist, much as HUNTR/X’s Honmoon holds back Gwi-Ma.
The Saja Boys’ big concert, on the other hand, is explicitly presented as a demonic soul-harvesting ritual, the kind of event conspiracy theorists accused rapper Travis Scott of staging back in 2021. The boys’ big number is literally called “Be Your Idol.”
A less spiritually insightful film might have concluded that the problem isn’t where you direct your worship or fandom, but that worship/fandom itself manipulates people’s emotions, suppresses their reason and individuality, and can be used for evil as easily as for good.
Imagine HUNTR/X deciding the world would be safer if there were no ecstatic pop concerts at all, breaking up the band, and leaving their fans with the famous lines from Monty Python’s Life of Brian: “Think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!”
KPop Demon Hunters avoids that simplistic message. The movie rightly understands that everyone worships something and that the only real choice is between bad worship and good worship.
Lost Souls and Demons
Critics are right to be wary of Rumi’s attraction to the infernal Jinu, but those concerns appear to stem from a translation issue. Although the film uses “demon” as a blanket term, Jinu is clearly not the same kind of being as the other denizens of the underworld.
Outside of Jinu, the film offers no sympathy for the devil. Mira and Zoey thirst over the other four Saja Boys, but don’t hesitate to slaughter them on stage when the moment comes. Most demons are faceless monsters who die by the hundreds beneath the girls’ blades.
Jinu explains to Rumi that he was born as a human centuries ago and sold his soul to Gwi-Ma, who now torments him with reminders of his past sins. In exchange for his service, Gwi-Ma promises to one day erase those painful memories.
This suggests Jinu is not so much a demon as a lost human soul, crippled by shame that drives him deeper into sin and despair rather than toward repentance. Rumi’s love helps convince him that redemption is always possible, no matter how great our transgressions might be, and his self-sacrificial death proves her hope was not misplaced.
Gay Pride or Christian Humility?
So what about the LGBT allegory of Rumi’s demon heritage, which her adoptive mother, Celine, insists she hide from the world?
The closest the film came to losing my sympathies was when Rumi screams at Celine for failing to love her as she is and declares she’d rather see the Honmoon broken than built on lies. This scene seemed to embrace the modern cult of authenticity, the belief that it’s better for all norms and boundaries to collapse than for one person to shrink from “being herself” in public.
But the story doesn’t end there. Rumi storms into the Saja Boys’ show, frees Mira and Zoey from their trance, and joins them to perform their new single, “What It Sounds Like.”
This track is not an “I don’t need to change” gay pride anthem in the tradition of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” It’s the soul-destroying Saja Boys who offer that kind of affirmation: “I’m the only one who loves your sins.” Satan respects pronouns.
HUNTR/X’s song, on the other hand, acknowledges human failings — and warns against letting them fester.
Celine demands that the girls hide their “faults and fears” from the world or risk undermining the faith that sustains the Honmoon. It’s the same rationale that too many Christian leaders have used to justify covering up sins in the church. But Rumi understands that bringing such failures to light is more effective than concealing them.
She’s quickly proven right. The trio’s new song wins over the crowd and reforges the Honmoon, stronger than ever.
KPop Demon Hunters is not an explicitly Christian or conservative film, but its insightful portrayals of spiritual warfare, the inevitability of worship, and the crippling power of shame give such viewers more to appreciate than to fear.