What Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters taught me about anger, faith, and the hope I have for my kid’s generation
An editorial by Alison Burdett
I watched K-Pop Demon Hunters a few weeks ago with my family of four, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. After we tucked the kids into bed that night, my husband and I stayed up talking about how incredibly relevant this movie is. And yes: the music is fantastic. I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat in my car, whether the kids are with me or not.
If you haven’t seen it and want to avoid spoilers, hit pause on this piece, go watch, and come back.
The film’s premise is simple: demons are draining people’s souls, and generations of musicians have used their voices (literally) to protect the world. (Let’s put a pin in the demon-slaying mechanics for now.) Then the demons decide to flip the tactic: “We’ll use our voices to steal their audience.”
Watching as a media-soaked mom, I couldn’t miss the parallel. It feels like our culture has split into sides, each trying to out-sing, out-shout, or out-shame the other. In the movie, the first group decides to fire back with a diss track about how much they hate the other side and (brace yourself) how they don’t deserve to live.
Sitting on the couch with my 8- and 10-year-olds, I almost turned the movie off. We don’t need more messages like that in the world. But I’m glad I stuck with it. Because the moment that made me want to stand up and shout yes came when the lead singer realizes that you can’t rid the world of its demons by amplifying hate. Those aren’t the words that blanket the earth in protection. As Romans 12:21 puts it, we don’t defeat darkness by mirroring it; we overcome it with good. 1 Peter 3:9 says, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing…”
There’s another thread I found powerful. (Spoiler alert again.) The leader of the Demon Hunters carries a hidden truth: she’s part demon. She’s fighting not only an enemy “out there,” but something complicated within herself.
That hit home for me. I was raised in a conservative family that remains conservative. In today’s climate, I oppose a lot of what that label has come to represent, yet I also identify with conservatives because they’re the people who love and formed me into who I am. It’s hard to hear peers speak with open contempt for “the other side,” not knowing that “the other side” is also my parents, my relatives, my roots, and partly, me.
I think many of us carry a version of that tension. We inherit beliefs, communities, and stories that shaped us, and then we meet a world that challenges them. Loving our people while disagreeing with their opinions can feel like a fault line running through our own hearts.
What ultimately shifts the story isn’t a louder chorus of contempt. It took Rumi, the lead singer of the Demon Hunters, getting to know her "enemy" and seeing who he was beyond just someone she was taught to hate. She began to get to know his story and see him not just as a category. As Bishop Easterling recalled during a recent meeting I was in, her mother used to say, “If we only got to know each other’s story, we’d have a lot more compassion for one another.” That’s the moral I want echoing in my children’s ears.
As a mom, I’m big on “show me, don’t tell me.” This movie doesn’t spell out all these lessons, but you experience them as an audience. As a Christian mom, I’m grateful when a movie shows inner conflict honestly: how anger can feel righteous, how crowds can sweep us along, and how choosing against that current can be the bravest act in the room. Sometimes harmony happens precisely “when darkness meets the light.” Matthew 5:14-16 tells us, "You are the light of the world...In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." In other words, live in a way that reveals God's goodness to the world.
A diss track won’t save the world. More hate won’t protect it from the demons within it. Our voices carry power. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” (Proverbs 18:21). Let’s use our voices to tell the truth without stripping each other of dignity. Let’s raise our voices, not to drown someone out, but to lift each other “up, up, up…You know together, we’re glowing.”