A fun action thriller with a classic revenge plotline, this time with the twist that our protagonist is a cryptography nerd and thus no CIA Agent training. 6/10.

Watched this with a bunch of friends, because they wanted to watch a movie that’s so bad and cringe it becomes funny again (I personally don’t really get this notion, why not just watch a good movie in the first place? But I digress). Anyways, the movie was surprisingly good.

As someone who’s neither a K-pop nor an idol fan, I wasn’t that into the singing itself nor whole idol aesthetic. That was probably my biggest pain point. But visually, the movie looks gorgeous: so many details, and finally a fresh animation style instead of the usual Pixar-like look. (Though I wouldn’t recommend watching it on Netflix, the bitrate drops are insane.) The singing and fight montages gave me strong vibes of League of Legends champion trailers, or like Devil May Cry if Dante were part of a girl idol group.

Thematically, the movie was also interesting (spoilers ahead). Some context: one of our protagonists, Rumi (I wonder if her name is a reference to the famous Islamic poet?), is part demon. This is shown through the patterns that appear on her skin. She’s ashamed of this fact and hides it by lying to the people around her. This all comes to a head in the finale, where she gets tricked by two other demons, and her demonic nature is revealed to her friends. They are shocked and reject her. This division allows the demons to invade Earth, since the K-pop idol group that protects humanity is distracted and fractured. Only by coming back together can they banish the demons and save the world.

I want to focus on the theme of lying. By hiding who she really is, Rumi builds her entire life and relationships on a shaky foundation. The longer this continues, the more lies she tells, and the harder it becomes to untangle everything. When the truth finally comes out, the results are catastrophic. This reminded me of a quote from the HBO show Chernobyl:

“We are on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They’re practically what defines us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”

~ Chernobyl TV show

In Chernobyl, the debt is paid with the explosion of the nuclear power plant. In K-Pop Demon Hunter, it is paid through the loss of Rumi’s closest relationships.

This is why the philosopher Immanuel Kant insists so strongly on truthfulness:

“Truthfulness in statements, which one cannot avoid, is a formal duty of the human being toward everyone. … A lie, therefore, defined merely as a deliberately untrue declaration to another human being, does not require the addition that it must be injurious to someone, as jurists demand for their definition. For it always does harm to someone: if not to another individual human being, then to humanity at large, in that it renders the source of right unusable.”

~ Immanuel Kant, On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy

For Kant, lying is not just a private debt we incur against ourselves, but a social one. Every lie weakens trust and undermines the value of truth in society as a whole. This is exactly what happens in K-Pop Demon Hunter: Rumi’s deception harms not only her, but also her group and the world they are meant to protect. If she had been honest with her friends from the beginning, the betrayal would never have divided them, and the demons’ invasion could have been prevented altogether.

There’s another interesting aspect of lying: how it shapes the way we see ourselves. Every action we take molds who we are and ultimately how we perceive ourselves. For example, a person who consistently helps others eventually makes helping second nature. The next time they’re in a situation where they could either help or ignore, they’ll likely help again, because that’s what they’ve always done. At our core, humans are creatures of habit.

But it goes further than that. Our present actions don’t just determine our future actions and habits, they also shape our self-image. This is why idioms like “a healthy mind in a healthy body” or “if you want to organize your psyche, start by cleaning up your room” resonate. It’s not that cleaning your room or exercising regularly magically makes you mentally healthy. Rather, by doing these things, you begin to see yourself as the kind of person who takes care of their space and health. That identity, in turn, motivates you to keep acting in line with it, especially when life becomes difficult.

Plotinus captured this beautifully when he compared self-cultivation to sculpting a statue:

“How, then, can you see the kind of beauty that a good soul has? Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there… until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’ until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you. […] For no eye has ever seen the sun without becoming sun-like, nor could a soul ever see Beauty without becoming beautiful. You must first actually become wholly god-like and wholly beautiful if you intend to see God and Beauty.”

~ Plotinus, On Beauty

Why do I mention all of this in a review about K-Pop Demon Hunter? Because this is exactly what happens to our protagonist, Rumi. Through lying to herself and others, she becomes a person who sees herself as a liar—a fundamentally bad person. The patterns on her skin are not just a constant reminder of this, but also a physical manifestation of what Plotinus might describe as the “ugly statue” she has sculpted of herself.

When her demon side is revealed to her friends, she loses hope of ever being virtuous again, of ever being someone they can rely on. She is consumed by shame, which is once again represented physically through the worsening of her demon transformation. By seeing herself as a demon, she becomes a demon. This is perfectly illustrated in the scene where Rumi confronts her caretaker, Celine:

Celine: Rumi?

Rumi: I thought I could fix it all. Fix me. But I ran out of time. They saw. They know. There’s no denying it now. This is what I am.

Celine: Rumi, no.

Rumi: You knew I was a mistake from the very start. Do what you should’ve done a long time ago. Before I destroy what I swore to protect. Please. Do it!

Celine: I can’t. When we lost your mother, I swore to protect all that was left of her, but I never thought that that would be a child like you. Everything I was taught told me you were wrong, but I made a promise. So I did my best to accept you and help you.

Rumi: Accept me? You told me to cover up, to hide!

Celine: Yes, until we can fix everything. And we still can. We can cover those up and put everything right again. I’ll tell Mira and Zoey it was all a lie, an illusion by Gwi-Ma to break us apart.

Rumi: No. No more hiding. No more lies!

Celine: Rumi, we can still fix this.

Rumi: Don’t you get it? This is what I am. Look at me. Why can’t you look at me?! Why couldn’t you love me?!

Celine: I do!

Rumi: ALL OF ME!!

Celine: This is why we have to hide it. Our faults and fears must never be seen. It’s the only way to protect the Honmoon.

Rumi: If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.

And with that final sentence, her transformation is complete. Her inner demon has become her outer demon.

This leads us to the second thematic aspect I want to explore: resolution. How does it all end?

Throughout the movie, Rumi has ongoing conversations with one of her adversaries, a demon. He tells her the story of how he became what he is: by abandoning his family so that he could live in luxury at the palace while they starved. This is something he could never forgive himself for, and just like Rumi, his actions shaped his self-image—and with it, his future choices. His transformation into a full demon took two steps: first, a deeply unvirtuous act; second, the loss of all hope of redemption.

I’ve been talking about the importance of right action, because our actions define who we are. But does that mean all hope is lost if someone goes too far down the wrong path?

The answer depends on the worldview you adopt. The ancient Greeks, such as Aristotle, who founded virtue ethics, would say yes. For them, character is built through action. If you’ve consistently chosen vice, your soul has been shaped accordingly, and there is no turning back, because you no longer even want to turn back.

Christianity, by contrast, gives the opposite answer: no, hope is never lost. Hope itself is a virtue. The possibility of a better tomorrow is central to Christ’s message. All people are sinners, everyone has done unvirtuous deeds, everyone has chipped their statue wrongly, as Plotinus might put it. The only difference is in the degree. But through hope in redemption, in Christ, we can be forgiven and transformed.

In K-Pop Demon Hunter, we see these two perspectives collide. Rumi offers help to the demon she has been speaking with, but he refuses. He cannot forgive himself. He sees himself as fundamentally evil, beyond redemption, too guilty to hope. Rumi, however, clings to a flicker of hope even in her darkest moment.

In the finale, these two contrasting outlooks reach their climax. Rumi’s emotional honesty moves her former friends to stand by her again. United, they banish the demons and save the world. Rumi, who chose hope, is redeemed. The demon, who chose despair, is damned.

The world returns to normal, and Rumi reconciles with her friends. But the patterns on her skin remain, faint but visible—a lasting reminder of the statue that once was, and the scars left behind.

As C.S. Lewis wrote:

“And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues, and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.”

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The movie is a 7/10.

For what it is, that is a superhero movie, it executes well on the idea, it also helps that the movie looks very good. Tough personally it is not my cup of tea, too troopish. 6/10.

The story is meh. What matters is Dante stylish killing demons. Though the CGI at some points is noticeably bad. 6/10.