Demon

Music has a way of bringing people together. That’s literally the whole point of KPop Demon Hunters, the anime-inspired musical phenomenon that is approaching the top of Netflix’s most-streamed movies of all time. Its titular trio of demon-slaying songstresses are the latest in a long line of hunters masquerading as a pop act, using the power of their fans’ souls, ignited by their melodies, to push demons back to their hellish prison. A series of limited singalong screenings is both the natural conclusion to its entire thematic foundation, and a correction for the boneheaded business deals that sequestered a truly stunning animated musical to a streaming service.

All that said, I was admittedly pretty underwhelmed with the showing I went to. I dragged my roommate and a visiting friend up from Brooklyn to the Alamo Drafthouse in Lower Manhattan dressed in Huntr/x t-shirts, with my friend having styled her hair to look like rapper Zoey’s signature buns in the film. We’d seen videos of the early screenings at Netflix’s theater in Los Angeles and heard a choir of fans, from adult cosplayers to young children, belting out every song, so we were prepared for a mini-concert to the backdrop of KPop Demon Hunters’ stunning visuals. What we got was, well, not that.

© Photo by Kenneth Shepard

The three of us were in the back row of one of Alamo’s smaller theaters as the host of the event tried her damndest to get the crowd more hyped, and Alamo should give that girl a raise for the work she was putting in. Despite the overwhelmingly adult crowd, the few kids were still the most excited to be there. It was pretty clear based on the adult to kid ratio that most of the crowd had not been dragged there by a child who had probably watched Huntr/x’s literal stan war on loop for the past two months, but even so, a lot of them were not playing into the show. They picked up their swag bag of ramen cups and photo cards of their bias, or favorite member of either Huntr/x or the Saja Boys, but the spirit of a singalong wasn’t flowing through the room. Maybe when the film actually started things would pick up? Nope.

“How It’s Done,” the opening song in KPop Demon Hunters, is exactly the song that would tell you if the a singalong audience understood the assignment. The fast-paced, rap-heavy tune is so full of swagger and attitude that anyone who was going to sing should have been singing the second Rumi came in with an exhausted sigh and said “you came at a bad time” while the distorted guitar played underneath her. Our fellow moviegoers, however, did not. As the girls started rapping, my friend and I noticed that we were pretty much the only ones singing above a whisper. Yeah, I belted out “fit check for my napalm era” at the top of my lungs to the ceiling through cupped hands, but it quickly became clear the audience we were with was not passing the vibe check.

To view the situation charitably, it can be hard to get past the established social contract of a movie theater even when you’re told that you’re allowed to be rowdy. Most establishments play a whole video telling you to sit down, shut up, and turn your damn phone off before every movie they play. To Alamo’s credit, they had a video before the show that was like, “Turn the fuck up. Queen out. Power the Honmoon.” Well, if the world had been relying on the crowd in my theater, the demons would have overrun Manhattan by dinner time. Maybe if my friend and I had refused to be silenced by a bunch of quiet curmudgeons, a rising tide would have lifted all ships, but everyone else’s relative silence made it awkward. I’ve been to movie experiences like Avengers: Endgame where the crowd was absolutely losing their shit, and I guess we were just dealt a bad hand this time around.

© Netflix

At a certain point, my friend and I were mostly just singing along softly in our seats. By the time the bubble-gum sweetness of “Soda Pop” began and no one was losing their shit about the demon boy band Saja Boys, it became clear to me and my friend that we were the only ones who were really buying into what we paid for, and everyone else was mostly just there to see the movie. This is valid because for most of us, this was the first time any of us had seen the film on the big screen. That’s still a mind-boggling shame. 

Still, even with my lukewarm crowd, seeing the movie in a theater cemented how bonkers it is that Sony was so unsure about the movie–which has now become a cultural phenomenon and whose music has hit #1 on the Billboard top 100–that it partnered with Netflix, who shouldered much of the film’s budget for exclusive rights to distribute it. Sony ensured it would make a profit on KPop Demon Hunters through the deal, but lost out on what could have been an absolute cash cow for it down the line.

Even after all the hype and the massive viewer numbers, the people behind the movie still seem to be underestimating it. The Alamo Drafthouses in New York City had four total singalong showings, two on Saturday, August 23, and two more on the following Sunday. Those predictably sold out within days, and by the time my group left our underwhelming screening, Alamo Drafthouse had added another half a dozen to the schedule. 

Because the gremlin in my brain is still singing this movie’s soundtrack, I put my Alamo Drafthouse membership to good use and decided to use it to go see the movie again the following day for no additional cost. Worst case scenario, I get to see a movie I really love on the big screen again. Best case scenario, I find a crowd that will match my freak. I picked a showing with more seats, thus statistically more likely to have sickos, but while it was marginally better, I still felt like most of the audience wasn’t buying in, and I didn’t even have my friend with me this time as a buffer. I still yelled “fit check for my napalm era” and sang to myself in my seat, but with the exception of one young diva who not only sang every song but recited every line, it felt like the singalong event was mostly just another chance to see a movie the way it should have been seen in the first place. It’s a shame that I scroll through my feeds and see videos of the most hype crowds singing along at screenings elsewhere and get FOMO for an event I was literally in attendance for, but at least I got the transcendent experience of hearing “What It Sounds Like” booming through the Drafthouse’s sound system. 

© Netflix

There was a guy sitting next to me at the second showing who told his friends he’d only seen the first half of the movie in passing, so he braved a singalong event to see the movie for the first time on the big screen. As much as I enjoyed watching KPop Demon Hunters on my laptop, I’m always going to envy his experience of seeing it for the first time in that environment. There’s an entire subplot in KPop Demon Hunters about Rumi, the half human/half demon lead singer, being told by her caretaker Celine that she must cover up her demonic patterns and hide who she is from the world, and even her best friends. No one could possibly understand, Celine says, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. That same unsure reservation is why KPop Demon Hunters’ victory lap of finally getting to be on the big screen is happening months after it’s already etched itself on our culture as much more than a limited-time event. Much like Celine herself, maybe some people at Sony should have had more faith in what they were making. And maybe by the time the eventual sequel comes out, New York City’s moviegoers will step the fuck up and sing along next time.

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