KPop Demon Hunters won the 2026 Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards. And its signature song, Golden, won the award for Best Original Song as well.
No one was surprised: record-breaking views on Netflix and music charts dominated for months across multiple countries. Parents know this without reading a single statistic. They know it because their children have the film memorized and sing the soundtrack obsessively from morning to night, as if those melodies lived inside them. A mass obsession that swept through children's bedrooms across half the world. And that is why I decided to dig deeper. What I found confirmed what I already suspected: a film can be celebrated by many and still be profoundly wrong. Exactly as happened with "Poor Things", starring Emma Stone.
The Huntrix and the Saja Boys: good vs. evil?
Rumi, Mira, and Zoey are HUNTR/X, a world-famous K-pop girl band. But that is only their cover. In reality, as the film's title suggests, they are demon hunters and guardians of a magical barrier called the Honmoon, the only thing keeping the human world separate from the realm of darkness. Demons exist, they move among us, they take on human appearances and drain the vital energy of human beings, who notice nothing because they cannot see them. Only the hunters can. Only they have the power to stop them.
But the HUNTR/X are powerful, so the demons change strategy. They enter the world disguised as what young people love most: they present themselves as the Saja Boys, a boy band of five demons in the guise of pop idols, led by Jinu. Their plan is as simple as it is diabolical: steal fans away from HUNTR/X, weaken the Honmoon by draining the energy that only audience devotion can generate, and open the portal to the demon king who waits in the darkness, ready to devour human souls. His name is Gwi-Ma. And no, that is not a coincidence: in Korean, magwi means demon. The Saja Boys introduce a concept that cuts closer to reality than most people care to admit: capturing someone's attention is not entertainment. It is a form of domination. And that is exactly how it works in the real world.
The glamour of evil
The first detail that should give us pause is the way the demons are presented: not monsters to be rejected, but irresistible, fascinating young men. The Saja Boys are beautiful, charismatic, stylish. Jinu, their leader, is an emotional manipulator with a tragic backstory: four hundred years ago, living in extreme poverty, he sold his own soul to Gwi-Ma to save his family. It is an incredibly effective narrative construction, because it shifts evil from the moral plane to the emotional one. First they show you the monster. Then they tell you his pain. Then they show you that he suffers too, that he had his reasons, that life betrayed him.
And this is where, as happens more and more often in entertainment for children and adults alike, evil gets softened and justified. In the end, Jinu himself sacrifices himself (?) for Rumi, as if that single gesture could wash away four hundred years of pacts with the devil. Children are no longer taught that the villain is an enemy to be recognized and rejected. They are taught that the villain is a misunderstood soul who deserves love. It is a reversal of values that happens gently, with the right music, and settles into the unconscious of young viewers without anyone ever naming it for what it is: a deception.
And what settles into the minds of the little girls? That the behavior of an emotional manipulator is acceptable, even desirable, if the person behind it is beautiful enough, tormented enough, special enough to love you in your sins. Emotional abuse disguised as romantic intensity is one of the most dangerous scripts that entertainment keeps normalizing. And young girls do not yet have the tools to recognize the difference between being loved and being owned.
Rumi and the serpent braid
Then there is Rumi. The protagonist. The demon hunter. The heroine every little girl wants to be and dress up as for Halloween. Rumi has a long, elegant braid that falls down her back and appears in every single scene. Perhaps a coincidence. Perhaps not. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with esoteric iconography knows that the serpent does not need to announce itself as such: it has the ability to camouflage itself. And with Rumi, it does exactly that. Because Rumi is half demon, and her narrative arc is presented as a journey of self-acceptance: she stops hiding her demonic half, stops being ashamed of it, and rejects the rigid distinction between human and demonic. And it is precisely at that moment that her eye begins to glow, evoking the recurring symbolism of the occult world hidden behind entertainment.
Young audiences are thus conditioned to the idea that whatever is dark inside us should not be fought or corrected, but simply integrated, because it is part of who you are. There is an enormous difference, and it is worth stating clearly: teaching a child not to be ashamed of their weaknesses and mistakes is one thing. Telling them that the boundary between light and darkness is an outdated prejudice to be overcome, that you can be both, that embracing your dark side is healing. That is not healing. That is a lie.
Music is never neutral
In this film, music is the primary vehicle: it is both the tool through which demons steal souls and the one through which the hunters protect them. And outside the screen, in the real world, it is the tool through which the film's messages enter children's minds and stay there.
Almost none of the film's songs are as innocent as they appear. Golden, seemingly an empowerment anthem, is actually telling us to throw our "patterns" into the past — the rules, the limits, the discipline — and embrace our wild side because we were born to shine. The producers themselves described it as an "I Want song", the desire song, in which the protagonist declares what they long for at the exact moment the audience is most emotionally invested. From a musical standpoint, the track functions as an earworm: a structure built on repetition and predictability that the brain tends to reproduce automatically. This effect is particularly powerful in children, whose critical filtering system is not yet fully developed, making the messages carried by music easier to absorb and harder to question.
Soda Pop, the song with which the Saja Boys introduce themselves to the world, is built as a metaphor for consumption: fill up, drink, desire more. In a film where demons seek to steal fans from HUNTR/X, this dynamic can be read as an allegory for feeding on the audience's attention and emotional energy. The lightness is the mask, not the content. Free, the duet between Rumi and Jinu, is a romantic ballad about the freedom found in being with someone who "loves your sins" and understands your dark side.
But among all of them, there is one that should make us stop and ask serious questions: Your Idol. It is sung by the Saja Boys. The demons. And the lyrics say:
Pray for me now
Keeping you in check, keeping you obsessed.
Play me on repeat, in your head.
I can be your sanctuary. You gave me your heart, now I'm here for your soul
I'm the only one who'll love your sins.
Living in your mind now, too late 'cause you're mine.
You're down on your knees, I'ma be your idol.
At the very beginning, the song opens with liturgical Latin evoking the Dies irae and the imagery of eternal judgment and flames.
A song that within the story serves as the ritual through which demons capture souls is consumed outside the screen as pure entertainment by children who repeat it, dance to it, and listen to it on loop.
Idolatry devours energy
And here we arrive at what I consider the most insidious message in the entire film, the one that operates most deeply. The film is built around the cult of the star. HUNTR/X fans are presented as the force that holds the world's protective barrier in place: it is their total, unconditional devotion that maintains the cosmic order. Without fans, the Honmoon collapses. Without adoration, the demons win. Children watching this film are handed a message of devastating power: idolizing a singer is not just normal: it is salvific; being an obsessive fan is a calling. The line between admiring and worshipping does not exist. In fact, the stronger the devotion, the better for everyone.
We live in an era where very young people develop clinically documented emotional dependencies on figures manufactured by multibillion-dollar industries. They cry over idols who do not even know they exist. They sacrifice their identity and mental health to resemble a star.
But stars are not carefully selected educational role models. They are not figures who have passed any kind of values-based evaluation. They are not people who have demonstrated they deserve the influence they wield. They are often very young, frequently fragile themselves, most of the time the product of an industry that shaped them with a precise objective in mind. And so whatever values they carry, whatever behavior they normalize, whatever worldview they promotes, arrives directly, without filter, without children having the tools to evaluate it. Because they are not listening to a person. They are listening to their idol.
Idolatry is not harmless: it is one of the most insidious forms of emotional dependency, precisely because it disguises itself as passion, as identity, as belonging. Presenting it as a positive cosmic force, as an act of world protection, in a product aimed at kids, is an educational message of a gravity that no polished animation can soften.
The industry is calculated and has absolutely no interest in raising free, aware, and critical young people. The industry has every interest in creating dependent, obsessed consumers. And if you think about it, in the film salvation does not truly arise from individual discernment. It arises from collective fusion. That is how the Honmoon grows stronger.
The real barrier
There is a precise mechanism through which manipulation acts on little ones, and it is so simple it is almost invisible: repetition. They do not even need to understand what they are absorbing. They just need to see it enough times. To sing it enough times. Every time they are exposed to negative content, a boundary shifts. Just a little. Imperceptibly. But it shifts.
The barrier that protects the purity of children from those who want to violate that purity does not always collapse dramatically. Most of the time it crumbles slowly, quietly, piece by piece.
In the film, that barrier is called the Honmoon.
In reality, that barrier is us: parents, educators, adults who still have the clarity and the responsibility to watch what our children watch; not with the eyes of someone trying to ruin the fun, but with the eyes of someone who knows that the most dangerous wolf is always the one dressed as a sheep. Or as a idol. A golden idol.
Rona
"We listened to the demons. We let them get between us"
What It Sounds Like - KPop Demon Hunters
