This summer Sony released “Kpop Demon Hunters”, which became Netflix’s top movie since releasing. In not just the U.S. but also in the top movies on Netflix in over 90 other countries around the world. The movie is now Netflix’s most streamed movie as of Aug. 26, already having over 236,000,000 streams. This movie can thank its success, in large part due to word of mouth, also through its rapid rise in popularity on the internet, which led to consistent views, with the amount rising every week and never dropping off.
Especially considering the movie whose number of streams it beat has been out for four years. Verse “Kpop Demon Hunters” a movie that has only been out for two months.
For those who haven’t seen it, the movie is about the most famous (fictional) Kpop girl group Huntr/x, as they try to save the Honmoon (a force field keeping the world safe) from demons.
They sing and dance and use their hidden super powers to save their fans from their new rivals the Saja Boys, a Kpop boy group who are secretly demons.
This story has proven to be a big hit all over the world and has taken the entertainment industry by storm.
The movie also predicted people’s feeds. With people and real Kpop idols singing the songs, some even doing the dances. Many people did/are still doing cosplays of a bunch of different characters from the movie
In addition to that, people are making art and edits to viral songs and songs from the movie.
People are even coming up with new elements that were not in the film or building off context from the movie to create new ideas. From characters to scenes and from digital to crochet, and fashion to ranking people’s attempts at singing and cosplays. The movie’s art, songs, and story bring the whole thing together.
Many people found the realistic characters refreshing and relatable. Along with the movie’s beautiful art style being defined because of its realism and use of many different body types and ages seen throughout the movie which has gained lots of positive feedback.
The movie’s overall theme of finding where you belong and finding yourself was very touching and well received, the fact you might not find a home with your family but with your friends or coworkers. The movie has its funny moments but also the tear-jerkers as well which adds several levels of depth to the characters and story.
Proving itself not to be just a kids movie, despite being under the kids category on Netflix.
Not just the movie but also the music has seen a rise in popularity.
The movie’s songs have taken over Spotify. Every song from the movie is in the U.S. top 10 songs on Spotify, holding the top four spots, with “Golden” being the number one song of the U.S. of Spotify’s top 50, but also number one on the global top songs and top 50 Spotify songs. It has retained this sport for at least a month. With the rest of the songs being in the top 20 global hits. The movie’s entire sound track has three billion streams across several platforms with 1.6 billion streams just on Spotify. Golden also hit the number one spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and “Your Idol” recently took the number eight spot and is continuing to rise.
This popularity is most likely because of how different each and every song is throughout the movie. This caused people’s opinions to vary when it comes to all of the different songs. “Golden” is a fierce song about finding your place in the world and being happy with who you are, which aligns with the movie’s theme. People’s interest in the film’s story of finding your identity has made “Golden” the most popular song along with its catchy lyrics and rhythm. “Golden” like the other songs by Huntr/x only feel right to the members when the songs are positive and about having confidence in oneself. Which we can see in the movie when they try to write a negative song against their rivals things go wrong.
While the songs sung by the Saja Boys are mostly about obsession and needing someone to rely on. It’s interesting to think about how the themes of the songs by the different groups can be so similar just from different points of views. Also when a song is sung between a member of both of the different Kpop groups the topics of the songs overlap and make a new kind of vibe to the song. This being another reason why the film was so widely liked.
The movie also had a limited release into theaters for a special sing along version the weekend of Aug. 23/24. It’s playing in over 1,700 theaters across the U.S. Over two-thirds of these shows are selling out several days in advance. Which is now available on Netflix, which you should go watch or re watch right now.
