Why is everyone crazy about KPop Demon Hunters? The numbers are impressive: the film became a global phenomenon in just a few weeks, with 236 million views on Netflix by the end of August 2025, making it the most-watched title ever on the platform. The plot follows a group of K-pop idols who turn into demon hunters, tracking them through spectacular battles, plot twists, and personal challenges. The film’s soundtrack is full of original hits that accompany the most intense moments and turn every scene into a musical spectacular.
The film took a seemingly simple formula—K-pop girl group plus supernatural battles—and gave it depth. It speaks as much to avid K-pop fans, who recognize every reference and every detail of their favorite world, as it does to those with no familiarity with that rich culture. The protagonists are not only beautiful and strong: they have relatable flaws and insecurities.
Music is a big part of the story: it is not just present in the background, but accompanies the action, energizes the scenes and helps viewers understand the psychology of the characters. The film culminates with “Golden,” a hymn to sisterhood and female empowerment that explodes at the moment when the three protagonists, after a series of misunderstandings and a setback that threatens to break up the group, come together for one last rehearsal before the big show. It is the scene before the final showdown, half rehearsal performance and half reconciliation ceremony.
The song, with its soaring refrain and intimate stanzas, functions as an emotional code: as they sing, the tensions between the characters melt away and the music translates into voice what words cannot say. The song was immediately adopted by fans, spawning trends, covers and shared choreography.
Another strength is the film’s faithfulness to K-pop culture, which it shows off without indulging in too many clichés. Maggie Kang and her team have curated choreography, aesthetics, and pop details that fans immediately recognize. It is a believable universe, where every gesture and every costume tells something about the protagonists’ world. This is the real reason the film avoids the usual stereotypes. The girls fight, support each other, and truly care about their performances; their stories have layers, with comic timing and pauses that let the characters breathe.
Another cliché the film avoids: the superficial use of Korean culture as “exotic decoration.” Here, no references have been thrown in haphazardly. From fan club management to training practices, from backstage dynamics to stage preparation rituals, the details are carefully observed.
What K-Pop Demon Hunters has done, and what helps to explain its enormous success, is to build an ecosystem in which the audience does not only spectate, but participate. The film’s “fandom”—a worn-out word now, but useful here—is not just comprised of accounts that post photos or comment: it is a machine that produces content dedicated to the movie, with choreography on TikTok, mile-long threads analyzing motivations and script errors. K-Pop Demon Hunters has become a collective work of analysis, reflection, and play, a circle that never seems to end.
Yet watching K-Pop Demon Hunters closely, one realizes that the real currency of the film is not the plot, but who inhabits it: the protagonists. Rumi, Mira, and Zoey are not glossy window-dressing figurines, but people who stumble—in choreography, in decisions, in feelings—and come across as compelling for that very reason. Fandom feeds on these imperfections: it makes theories, memes, tutorials out of them. A costume turns into an Instagram filter; a shot becomes a quote; a dance move ends up looped on TikTok.
When the community sets its rituals in motion—collective rewatches, shared playlists—the film stops being a closed object and begins to live in the minds of those who love it. It is this narrative elasticity that ignites the passion for K-Pop Demon Hunters: not just affection, but a desire to participate and make a narrative of it in turn.
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair Italy.
Valentina Colosimo
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