Instead, the event surprised me on every level. Most of the ticket holders were adults, many of them clearly middle-aged, and all of them in ordinary street clothes. Only two people brought lightsticks. Everyone stayed sedately in their seats throughout the show. (Except for one highly entertaining kid, maybe 4 years old, who twirled like a ballerina and high-kicked like a showgirl down in front of the screen during “What It Sounds Like.”)
But I was still clearly sitting among the super-fandom: Sneaking looks at my fellow patrons during the movie, I saw plenty of people belting enthusiastically along with the songs, doing their best to keep up with the Korean-language lyrics and the lightning-fast rap sections of each song as the words raced across the screen. Best of all, I saw big, happy grins throughout the theater, even during some of the movie’s darkest moments.
After the show, I sought out some of the screening’s most enthusiastic participants. “I’ve never gone to a sing-along before,” an art student named Baer told me. “I thought it’d be really fun to just enjoy the movie as part of a community.” They said they’d been exposed to KPop Demon Hunters’ music through TikTok, and started listening to it regularly, long before actually watching the movie.
“I’m a huge fan of musicals, and a huge fan of anime movies, so I was like, Musical anime movie! I can see this!” they said. “K-Pop, I’m not so much into, but I really like the movie’s commentary on K-Pop culture and fan culture, and the music is really well written. I listen to the soundtrack all the time.”
James, a 38-year-old massage therapist, said he was initially lured to the movie via online fan art and “snippets on Instagram or YouTube,” and that he’s “listened to the album practically every day” since first watching the film in June. “I love singing along when I’m listening to music or watching musicals at home, so being able to do this in an actual theater with a bunch of other people? […] It’s exciting.”
While he’s seen KPop Demon Hunters at home several times already, he enjoyed seeing it on a big screen because of the small details he caught on this viewing. He pointed out that Zoey’s yellow sweatshirt in the final scene features an image of “Derpy,” the unofficial name for Jinu’s blue tiger. And he noticed this time that the HUNTR/X fan who keeps ripping off one band T-shirt to reveal a different one as his fan loyalty changes throughout the movie isn’t wearing a Saja Boys shirt at the final concert: He’s wearing one proclaiming his fandom for Gwi-Ma, the demon king who was planning to devour the souls of everyone at the concert.
“I notice new things every time I watch it again,” he said.
James was at the screening with his partners Victor, a 45-year-old software product manager, and Natali, a 35-year-old paralegal. All three of them had different levels of fandom for the movie and for live theatrical audience events, but they all said they were hooked on the soundtrack itself.
“I’m normally not into K-Pop, and not into sing-alongs personally,” Natali told me. “[Victor and James are] more into theater than I am. But I just fell in love with this. I thought the music was really unique and interesting, I thought the visuals were standout.”
He said the movie took him by surprise, because Netflix didn’t advertise or promote it much, until it suddenly became inescapable. “All of a sudden, it exploded, and I’m seeing a whole bunch of buzz on the internet, but I’m like, Oh, whatever, not my thing. Then we watched it, and suddenly I’m listening to it on repeat at home.”
Natali said he was never a fan of audience-participation events before the KPop Demon Hunters screening. “I used to work in movie theaters, and we would have events like this, and they would be dead. Very little audience for them. I remember the last big one while I was working in theaters was Frozen — they had sing-alongs for that, and it was nothing but kids. So this was a different experience. I saw more adults in this than I would’ve thought.”
Victor, on the other hand, used to be part of a Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow cast, so this kind of sing-along was right up his alley. He told me he appreciated the chance to turn a private home-viewing experience into a shared community event. “I think it’s pretty great to take something from streaming and get it in theaters,” he said. “There’s been a lot of anxiety with more and more stuff going to streaming, and where that leaves movie theaters. So if this turned into a more common thing, I think that would be good for theaters, which would be great.”
He admits that even as a Rocky Horror enthusiast, he couldn’t manage all the songs in KPop Demon Hunters. “Keeping up with Zoey’s rap is a challenge,” he said. “Keeping up with the rap in ‘Your Idol’ at the end? I could do that. There’s no keeping up with Zoey.”
But he thinks that might be part of the draw for some sing-along viewers. “Not everything in Rocky Horror is easy to sing — Meatloaf’s song is notoriously miserable. I spent five months reaching the point where I could sing that whole thing, and that was part of the challenge. That was part of the fun of going back every month, like, OK, how much better am I at this song? I think for some people, the fact that these songs are hard could actually be a fun challenge.”
“It’s not like they were trying for a little-kid sing-along,” Natali said. “They’re really good songs, really dynamic. And each of them is different. ‘Soda Pop’ and ‘Your Idol’ are about as far apart as you can be. So if you like the Saja Boys, you’ve got two different dynamics. ‘Takedown,’ ‘Golden,’ and ‘How It’s Done’ all have completely different vibes. So [part of what makes KPop Demon Hunters enjoyable is] them not specifically trying to make a sing-along that anyone can approach.”
The KPop Demon Hunters sing-along edition is now streaming on Netflix.
