Parents are binging ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ on Netflix as much as their kids

At first, Silvia Cruz, a parent of five, was skeptical when her children asked to watch KPop Demon Hunters.

“First of all, that title,” Cruz, a 41-year-old resident of Wake Forest, North Carolina, said in an interview. “No, you’re not watching anything with ‘Demon’ in it. And then I was like, ‘K-pop. What?’”

Now, by her count, she has seen the megahit Netflix animated film at least a dozen times since its release in June. Her kids, who range in age from 2 to 13, are up to about 30 viewings, she said, and when they’re not watching it, they’re usually listening to the soundtrack.

The movie has become an unexpected juggernaut this summer, and is well on its way to reaching the cultural resonance previously achieved by Disney films like Encanto and Frozen. The fantasy musical follows members of a fictional K-pop group, Huntrix, whose work consists of entertaining fans with their music and protecting them from demons.

“I was basically just trying to make something that I wanted to see: a movie that celebrated Korean culture,” Maggie Kang, who wrote and directed the film with Chris Appelhans, told The New York Times last month. “And for some reason, I landed on demonology.”

While the film was an immediate hit, its reach has only grown since its release. According to data provided by Nielsen, KPop Demon Hunters was streamed for about 250 million minutes during its release week — putting it squarely in the Top 10 of all streaming films for that week. But instead of tapering off as new titles became available, as is usually the case, the film only gained momentum. By the end of July, KPop Demon Hunters viewership had almost quadrupled, to 949 million minutes in the month’s third week alone, contributing to an overall increase in Netflix’s viewership numbers.

But the phenomenon hasn’t been limited to children. Parents are eagerly watching the film, too, and it has become a running joke on social media platforms that mothers and fathers are engaging with the film as much as — or even more than — their children are.

“Once a year, something breaks the internet, and ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ is 2025’s breaking the internet,” Chris Mann, a Los Angeles-based content creator and the parent of two boys, ages 4 and 8, said in an interview. “And when something’s so dominant, you can’t ignore it. And as a content creator, for me, it was the perfect storm. I’m a parent who literally was experiencing this addiction in real life.”

Comedian Andy Samberg said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” this week that he was currently on a KPop Demon Hunters trip.”

“I’m all about it,” Samberg told Tiffany Haddish, the show’s guest host. “I thought it would be something I could share with my daughter, who is 8. And I tried to get her to listen to it and she was like, ‘Nah, I’m good.’ ”

Nor is the craze limited to the screen itself. Its soundtrack has landed several songs, including “Golden,” “Your Idol” and “Soda Pop,” in the Billboard Top 10. The popularity of “KPop Demon Hunters” is the latest indication of the growth in K-pop fandom worldwide, especially in the United States, and how much South Korea’s cultural exports have grown. According to a survey released last year by the South Korean government, more than 200 million people across 119 countries considered themselves fans of Hallyu, a term that refers to Korean culture that has spread outside the region, with 68% of fan clubs focused on K-pop.

The film’s cultural specificity is one key reason for its success, said Melissa Martinez, an assistant teaching professor of media at Syracuse University. Kang has said that the soundtrack was inspired by K-pop titans like BTS, Blackpink and Stray Kids.

The team behind the film “made sure that it was as authentic as possible, not just in the details of the story and the Korean cultural elements,” Martinez said. “But the K-pop — the elements of the music — were not just an imitation.”

“In the particular is contained the universal,” as James Joyce once put it, and perhaps no recent film embodies that sentiment as much as this one. The movie is attracting viewers who have never been exposed to K-pop before. Cruz, the mother of five and a K-pop newbie, said she kept coming back to the film because of the music — everyone loves an earworm.

They’re not just catchy tunes that get stuck in your head, but the voices are amazing,” Cruz said. “The melodies are really rich and intricate. Your body can’t help but bop along and sing along.”

Melissa Zaro, a mother of 7- and 9-year-old daughters in Clifton, New Jersey, said that watching the movie with her children had become a bonding experience, despite her not knowing much about K-pop to begin with. One of her daughters has been learning to play the soundtrack on the piano with a teacher: “I am singing it in this guy’s basement while she’s learning piano.”

The film’s fast pace makes it an ideal watch for children growing up in the era of TikTok.

“I’ve watched shows with them from when I was a kid, and they can’t sit through all of them because they said they’re too boring, they’re too slow,” Zaro, 42, said. “This movie is much quicker. I think they’re just used to faster everything.”

Like any good pop culture phenomenon, it has taken on a life on its own — meaning memes, memes and more memes. Many people have posted videos showing parents evolving from scoffing at KPop Demon Hunters to being totally consumed by it. One posted by Cruz has garnered almost 143,000 likes. So has one posted by Mann.

Netflix is capitalizing on the hype by offering sing-along theater showings this weekend in some countries, including Canada, Australia and the United States. There is not a confirmed sequel in the works, though the creative team has teased that they have ideas if one were to materialize. In the meantime, it appears that KPop Demon Hunters will continue to attract young K-pop fans — and their parents.

“As a millennial parent, we grew up in the golden era of boy bands and girl groups: ’NSync, Backstreet Boys, Destiny’s Child,” Mann, 43, said. “That kind of unapologetic pop music is baked into our DNA. So now that we have kids, this movie comes along with this over-the-top choreography and these ridiculously catchy hooks, and it kind of unleashed the ’90s Kraken in us.”

For Mann, watching the film on repeat has become about more than entertaining his children.

“I was reliving my own childhood fanboy moments of these groups that dominated my youth,” Mann said. “But now I’m handing out juice boxes instead of dancing like a rave with a glow stick.”