POLITICS: KPop Demon Hunters and the Spiritual Combat – USSA News

Netflix’s breakout film of 2025 was an animation about a trio of female singers who secretly fight…. demons? Yeah, demons! As of this writing, KPop Demon Hunters has been watched an astounding 500,000,000 times. Half a BILLION streams. Our family is responsible for two of them.

Yes, I admit, I watched it twice. I enjoyed it and so did our kids. It was a little scary at points for the younger ones, so they ran off and played Minecraft. But the dialogue was funny, the action engaging, and the music surprisingly catchy (I’m bopping to it as I write this).

Spiritual warfare is one of my favorite topics, so I was keenly interested in how the movie would depict the demonic. While it got a couple of significant aspects wrong because it doesn’t come from a Christian worldview, what really amazed me were the things that it got right.

The Story in Brief

(Spoiler alert – I’m going to talk about significant plot elements through the course of this article, so if you are one of the seven people who haven’t seen the movie, I’m sorry.)

The story of the movie follows the three female singers in the band Huntr/x, which is the latest in a line of girl band / demon hunter trios. Their music creates a barrier called the Honmoon between the natural world and the demonic realm that prevents armies of demons from running amok and devouring the souls of humanity. The head demon, Gwi-Ma, languishes beneath this barrier until his demonic minion Ginu comes to him with the idea of countering Huntr/x with a demonic boy band that will steal the hearts of the fans, the source of Huntri/x’s power. He and four other demons form the Saja Boys, named and styled after the Korean spirit that ferries souls to the underworld. They return to earth and immediately rival Huntr/x in style and popularity.

The central plot twist is that Rumi, one of the members of Huntr/x, is half demon. Her mother was a demon hunter, but her father was a demon. Her parents relationship is never fully explained. She carries the mark of the demonic in the form of patterns that move and shift on her skin. (Interestingly enough, I’ve heard from a real exorcist about a type of demonic manifestation that appears as serpents writhing underneath the skin.) She keeps this secret from her band mates until the demons reveal it 2/3 through the movie. The very public revelation of her “patterns” causes a breakup of the trio and launches the story into the climactic battle against Gwi-Ma at (of course) a giant stadium concert.

During the course of the story, Rumi falls in love with Ginu, who is actually a human soul who was enslaved by Gwi-Ma three centuries earlier when he succumbed to temptation and abandoned his family for fame and fortune. Her love for him inspires the hope that plays a crucial role in the victory at the end of story. Rumi and her friends reconcile and use their music to throw Gwi-Ma back into the underworld.

Errors of Kind

I want to touch on the major errors briefly. They seem obvious to me because I’ve actually participated in exorcisms and have studied the demonology at some length. But I know that there’s a large percentage of the film’s audience that just doesn’t know what the Church teaches about demons, or doesn’t believe that demons are real all.

The first error is the idea that Rumi is a human/demon hybrid. I’ve since learned that this kind of relationship/parentage is relatively common in anime and manga stories. It’s coming from a non-Christian world view that doesn’t draw a hard line between humans and demons. The truth that the Church teaches is that demons (which do actually exist) are fallen angels – creatures that are immaterial and do not have bodies. While they are shown in scripture to occasionally assume bodies, they are unable to perform any natural human acts, like eating or fathering a child.

The one passage in scripture that seems to contradict this is in Genesis 6, which depicts the Sons of God intermarrying with the daughters of men and producing the Nephilim. St. Thomas Aquinas interprets this to mean that the righteous sons of Seth (Adam’s third son) and the daughters of Cain intermarried. He affirms that angels do not have physical bodies and cannot perform physical acts like reproducing with humans (Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 51, Article 3, Reply to Objection 6).

The second major error is that Ginu is a human soul that became a demon after making some bad decisions and giving himself over to Gwi-Ma during his natural human life. Again, demons are not human souls. They are fallen angels. A soul that chases after the temptations offered by the demons does not become a demon, it becomes a damned soul. Ghosts are a question for another time, but they are not and will never be demons.

The last error is perhaps the most important. In the final climactic battle scene, the members of Huntr/x forgive one another and come together to defeat the demon boy band and its master. This doesn’t work. Human beings are incapable of defeating demons on their own. The reason that Jesus took on flesh and became man is that humans needs the grace of God to conquer the devil. While the demons are not gods, they are incredibly powerful spiritual entities that had dominion over the earth because of the fall. People can’t save themselves from bondage to the devil. We need a Savior.

The Tempter’s Power

These seem like pretty significant objections, and they are, but I now want to focus on what the movie got right. There are some big ones.

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1. Evil makes itself attractive. – Evil and the demonic doesn’t always or even usually look like the horrific pea soup vomit scenes from “The Exorcist.” The devil is a hunter of souls and knows that fear isn’t good bait. Instead, he packages temptations in wrapping like the Saja Boys. Almost impossibly good looking and cool, even the members of Huntr/x are tempted to fall head over heels for the demonic group. The devil makes temptations attractive. He leverages natural human appetites like hunger, sexuality, and ambition, and corrupts them into vices like gluttony, lust, and pride. He knows that he’ll catch more flies with corn syrup than he will with vinegar.
2. The devil’s little whispers – The film portrays the characters experiencing the “whispers” of the devil. It does a really good job of showing how these little whispers lead us to make self-destructive decisions, often by pointing out our secret character defects. As the film launches into the big climax, the two other members of Huntr/x both experience these whispers pointing out their flaws and how they will never be truly loved. These depictions match quite well to my own experience of the devil’s temptations, as well as to teachings from the saints like St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order.
3. The Devil is a divider – The word diabolos comes from the Greek word “to divide.” The devil works to make us divided within ourselves and to separate us from those who love us. The devil wants us internally conflicted and isolated from one another because it makes us an easy target for his other temptations like hopelessness and despair. Like a lion prowling on the edge of a large herd of gnu’s, the devil tries to the pull the small and fragile away from the protection of the group.
4. The Power of Shame – Rumi has a secret that she wants to keep hidden from her band mates. As demon hunter with demons of her own, Rumi’s secret shame of her demon father erects a barrier between her and her best friends. At one point, when Ginu is conspiring with Gwi-Ma to bring down Rumi, he says, “She has shame. We can exploit it to destroy her.” Shame separates us from people, even those closest to us, because it makes us think that we’re unworthy of love. Shame often drives the kind of perfectionism that Rumi exhibits during the early parts of the movie. She thinks she can outrun the shame if she is perfect, but in truth she needs to be set free.
5. Patterns of Family Sin – When the movie refers to patterns, it is talking about the glowing tattoo like markings on Rumi and Ginu’s skin. For me, the word “pattern” evokes family dynamics that can and do have a real effect on a person’s soul. For instance, while a father’s alcoholism doesn’t automatically make a child an alcoholic, the behavior patterns and sins that accompany alcoholism can and do affect a child’s self-concept and inclinations. This is especially true of physical or sexual abuse, which can cause a child to go to extreme lengths to conceal the shame caused by these sins against them. The way we view the world and our own actions is deeply affected by our family of origin and our life experiences.
6. The Power of Music – Music cannot save us from the devil, but that doesn’t mean that it lacks power. Aristotle talks about music’s affect on the soul and goes so far as to say, “music has a power of forming the character.” https://life-craft.org/the-power-of-music/ As I understand it, this is because music can stimulate both the mind and the emotions. Music that sounds despairing can inspire despair, while music that sounds courageous and triumphant can inspire courage and hope. It makes sense that environments like bars that thrive on drunken debauchery play music that in lyric and melody focus on getting drunk and having sex. The music enhances and promotes that kind of atmosphere. In a similar way, beautiful classical or sacred music can bring peace and order (Aristotle’s good character) to a home. Musical lyrics also stick in the memory. I can still recite the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice, even though I haven’t heard it in 20 years. It’s a song about doing and dealing drugs. Why is that still in my brain? Because the brain doesn’t have a delete button.
7. The Power of Forgiveness and Love – The power that enables the climactic triumph over Gwi-Ma flows from the reconciliation between the members of Huntr/x and the love between Rumi and Ginu. Love and forgiveness have real power. The capital “L” Love that is God is in fact the only source of true victory over the devil. His forgiveness is the only thing that can true set us free from the bondage of shame and sin and death.

Where Do We Go From Here

When a movie like this hits the public consciousness, the Church has an opportunity, and really an obligation, to engage. Part of the reason that this movie is so popular is that it resonates with young people’s life experience. I am convinced that everyone has experienced the demonic in some way, even if it wasn’t as dramatic as stuff flying around the room. You don’t have to run naked through the streets of Los Angeles to realize that the devil exists (been there, done that). They know at some deep level that demons are real.

In a couple of weeks, I will give a talk about the movie at a parish youth group meeting. The adult leader said that she has had a lot of trouble getting kids to show up and engage in general. Apparently, since she started advertising, “KPop Demon Hunters and the Spiritual Combat,” interest has surged.

The Church has been called by God to proclaim the Good News to all creation. A common obstacle to proclaiming the Gospel is the lack of a shared language. Cultural artifacts like KPop Demon Hunters can be leveraged to speak the truth in a way that young people can understand. We can leverage their interest in something that speaks a partial truth to introduce them to the fullness of Truth. It can serve as a bridge between two different world views.

KPop Demon Hunters connects with people because it is a redemption story. I think a love of redemption stories is written into every human heart by the Author of the human soul, because He wants to stir in us a desire and hope for our own redemption. This movie can be a part of THE redemption story that God is bringing to fulfillment, if only we can get creative and help our young people engage in the spiritual combat. Because they’re in a spiritual combat, whether they know it or not.

To read my story of how Jesus Christ snatched me from the snares of the devil, get my book Demoniac on Amazon.com. Subscribe to my Substack to get more of my articles directly into your inbox at nathankrupa.substack.com.