Why I'll Let My Kids Watch KPop Demon Hunters (but not Frozen)
Thoughts on the feel-good Christian movie of the year
I know I'm late to the party with this one, but we're not a Netflix family (it happens) and my husband and I saw KPop Demon Hunters in a brick and mortar movie theater last week. And I’m pleased to say that I loved it.
Because we saw it the day after Halloween, I didn’t fully appreciate the multitude of purple-haired little girls out trick-or-treating. While I reflexively cringe at this kind of pop culture hero worship, I’m cringing significantly less hard over Hunterween than over Elsaween. And not just because, having grown up half-Chinese in a place where platinum blonde hair was considered the beauty ideal, it would feel less icky clipping a purple braid into my daughters’ hair than covering it up with an Elsa wig.
Frozen has been banned in our house since our first daughter was born. Jane loves anything sparkly, pretty, and feminine, and Lucy is following in her pink-glittery footsteps. If I let them watch Frozen even once, I know I will lose them to the Elsa mind virus forever. Not only do I not want to hear Let it Go 1,000,000,000 times, but I don’t want my children internalizing the harmful ideology peddled by that movie. You know—the whole be yourself, no right, no wrong, no rules for me, “love” is the answer garbage.
So why do I fully intend to show my family a movie with—on the surface—many of the same themes? Because not only is KPop Demon Hunters completely ideologically opposed to Frozen (and with infinitely better music), but despite what some Christian influencers would have you believe, it may be the most Christian movie I’ve seen in years.
I know it wasn’t written this way on purpose, and is based on ancient Korean folk religion, but we are God’s offspring. When we create something genuinely good, we can’t help reflecting Him. “All things denote there is a God”1 and all that. Or, if you don’t want to take Alma’s word for it, take Paul’s: “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”2 KPop Demon Hunters is certainly of good report and highly praised, and I hope by the time you’re done reading this, you’ll see the truth, beauty, and virtue in the movie.
Now, this movie isn’t perfect, and the writing is muddied by two major pitfalls. The first concerns Rumi, the purple-braided protagonist. Rumi’s skin is discolored by patterns inherited from her demonic father, patterns that mark demons for what they are. These marks—and demonic influence in general—grow in response to shame, in this case over being tainted by her parentage. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe that children are not held morally accountable for the sins of any of our ancestors3, and the story would be more compelling if she’d actually committed a shameful sin, like Jinu. Then again, Christians from other sects might appreciate the nod to original sin. We’ll chalk this up to YMMV, and for purposes of this post, let’s say that Rumi’s shame is justified.
The other pitfall is having such a large generational trauma subplot, which feels a little old and played out and serves mostly to give Rumi a reason to feel ashamed of something for which she’s not culpable. But knowing what I do about Korean parenting styles, I can’t blame the writers for wanting to grapple with this issue. We can Let It Go.
Rumi and her two friends/bandmates are tasked with fighting soul-sucking demons and strengthening the Honmoon, a magical barrier that keeps them in the underworld. They do this with both magical weapons and their music (hence the KPop element). Just the word “demon” is enough to send many Christian moms running for the hills, confused children in tow. But it’s important to remember that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”4 Demonic entities are real, and believers face them every day. It’s not sinful to depict this, even with fantastical elements—in fact, it’s crucial that we teach this idea to our children, and fantasy is one of the best tools we have for reaching them.
Music is another one of these tools, which is why in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we spend a significant chunk of our Sunday worship teaching gospel songs to children. We’re also taught that “the song of the righteous is a prayer unto [God], and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.”5 So when your five-year-old comes home singing “I am a Child of God” or “My Heavenly Father Loves Me,” she’s doing her part to fight real-life demons.
Moving on. Rumi has a lot on her plate, as the aforementioned patterns are spreading over her skin and somehow affecting her voice. She deals with this by covering them with her clothing (ironic, given the pearl-clutching over “scantily clad” cartoon girls—I’ve seen your short shorts and sleeveless shirts, Karen, and they’re about as bad as anything in the movie) and pushing the group to keep releasing music, keep performing, even when they’re tired. She’s desperate to fix herself, and she’s trying to do it all on her own—which of course is impossible, especially in the face of a coordinated demonic effort to take her down.
Enter the Saja Boys, demons who appear as angels of light6—or, you know, a sexy boy band.
These guys are modern-day idols personified. They’re attractive, they’re triangular, and their music, though catchy, is more inane than anything else on the OST—until it isn’t.
The Saja Boys’ second song, “Your Idol,” is chilling. Most of the lyrics are the kind of self-worshiping bluster found in your typical top 40 song, but they’re interwoven with lines that could come straight from Satan’s unembodied mouth. Lines like, “I’m the only one who’ll love your sins,” “you gave me your heart, now I’m here for your soul,” “Your obsession feeds our connection,” “No one is coming to save you.” The melding of banal, everyday evil with fundamentalist demonism is truly masterful.
(Also, in Googling the lyrics, I just realized the song begins a “Dies Irae” chant. Chef’s kiss.)
Again, it’s not harmful to see Satan’s tactics depicted. It might be scary but, well, it should be scary. Maybe our kids will pick up more of the similarities between this overtly demonic song and the dreck they hear on Spotify. “Satan hath desired to have [them],”7 after all, and like the demon king Gwi Ma, our children need to be aware that there is a literal evil being who wants nothing more than to “drag them down to the gulf of misery and endless wo.”8
This is one of the main things that sets KPop Demon Hunters apart from (and above) Frozen. The main villain of Frozen is of course Anna’s deadbeat boyfriend, but other “bad guys” include Elsa’s parents (though apparently not the cutesy trolls who told her parents she needed to repress her powers?), her own self-doubt, and a society that (sniff) can’t understand the beauty of what she can do. She triumphs by overcoming all of these barriers and being authentically herself. When Demon Babe Jinu shares his emotionally scarring backstory with Rumi, she has an identity crisis that seems to indicate that this movie is headed the same direction. Maybe the demons are misunderstood. Maybe they’re the victims here, and the hunters should stop killing them.
But this is no Disney-fied kumbaya storyline. At one point, Rumi’s hesitancy and failure to focus on her duty leads to an entire train full of people being consumed by demons. The movie never lets us forget that the threat they’re facing is real. The stakes are high, and even though Jinu may be repentant, making peace with the demons is never going to be an option.
Like Elsa, Rumi reaches the point where she can’t hide her flaws anymore. And like Elsa, she has a big, glorious musical transformation. But whereas Elsa’s transformation is about fully accepting herself and hanging the consequences, Rumi’s is about confronting the dark parts of her nature so she can overcome them. Scripture is very clear that confession is an important part of the repentance process.91011 When she sings about letting “the jagged edges meet the light,” she doesn’t mean the cold spotlight of self-acceptance—she means the proverbial sunlight that is the best disinfectant. Or, even better, “the light of the world”12 that casts out all darkness.
Rumi and Jinu confess their sins and forsake them, and both obtain redemption. Rumi’s patterns change and become beautiful, and Jinu regains his soul and is able to make a heroic sacrifice so Rumi and her friends can seal the demons away. Rumi is able to fully participate in life without shame, and the world (or at least Korea) is saved.
But Elsa’s hand-wavy “love can thaw” realization that magically undoes all the consequences of her own selfishness is cool too, I guess.
All this to say: KPop Demon Hunters is full of good Christian truth, and we shouldn't be afraid to watch it with our children.
And hey! If you want another great story about young people being kicked out of their families and fighting demonic entities, a repentant “demon” trying to get the FMC to trust him, complicated parent-child relationships, music as a plot device, a giant cat, and delicious Christian themes, pick up a copy of my book, Nightwalker! (Jazz hands) I kid you not, it has all these things.
What do you think? Have you seen KPop Demon Hunters? What did I get wrong (or right)?
I will quibble a bit here and point out that "the whole be yourself, no right, no wrong, no rules for me" bit is not the message in Frozen. Yes, that's the lyrics of the most catchy song, but Elsa is not the protagonist of the story. In fact, she was supposed to be the villain. They changed the story halfway through development once they realized that they had made her too sympathetic, which is why we get the out of nowhere heel turn by Anna's boyfriend. Either way, Elsa's selfishness is correctly shown to be the cause of the problems. Could they have made that more clear? Probably, but it's Disney.
Teddy has gone down the rabbit hole of finding ‘K pop Demon Hunter’ fan music. Did you know that there is a version of Golden done with bagpipes. It’s kind of epic. Such fun music.