Rating: ***
Review Date: 7/19/25
Every generation has a trio of female singers whose voices keep the demon world sealed away, and this generation's heroes are a K-Pop band called Huntrix. The demon lord Gwi-Ma's repeated attempts to defeat them have failed until a shrewd demon named Jinu suggests pitting a demon boy band against them. This throws the girls off their game, especially when their lead vocalist Rumi loses her voice at a critical moment. She's also hiding a terrible secret from her bandmates which could lead the world to ruin, and she falls right into Jinu's trap. But the power of love, song, family, friendship, and believing in oneself finally triumphs over evil.
Unfortunately, the film is tonally all over the map and can't decide what it wants to be, which makes for a very uneven viewing experience. The character design is great, but the animation is surprisingly jerky. I don't know if that's due to frame rate issues or lack of motion blur, but Sony Animation has been known to mess with frame rates before (I'm looking at you, "Into The Spider-Verse"). The character dynamics are great and the film works best when Rumi, Mira, and Zoey are being goofy. I also appreciated the fact that when they're not busy being sexy, they like to spend their time lounging around in their sweats without makeup and eating junk food. Unfortunately, the action scenes lack punch and could really benefit from being spiced up, but their intentional limpness makes sense for the tween target demographic. This is not your typical teen anime fare, and despite the Korean setting, the Western sensibilities stick out like a sore thumb.
However, the biggest disappointment is the music, which is regrettably awful and sounds culturally appropriated for an American audience. I used to like K-Pop fifteen years ago, but contemporary K-Pop has too much western influence and sounds just like all the other crap that everyone else is making, with too much emphasis on rap, which I absolutely hate. The pop sensibilities are completely absent, and all of the musical numbers made me cringe. There's also a weird underlying message about how important it is to hide your faults and fears in order to function in society. On the plus side, the demon tiger and demon crow are utterly adorable and totally steal the show. While it's a fun piece of eye candy, I left feeling like it could have been so much better. If only it had more intense fighting and less abrasive singing...