Haunting Harmonies: Music, Myth, and Magic in 'Sinners' and 'K-pop Demon Hunters'

This post cannot be termed a movie review per se, but I wish to share something that struck me about two movies I watched this summer: Sinners (2025), produced, written, and directed by Ryan Coogler, and Kpop Demon Hunters (2025), directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans and based on a story by Maggie Kang.

Both these movies are connected in how they explore the different dimensions of music, grounded in culture, mythology, history, and the supernatural. While Sinners gives a glimpse into the mystical powers of blues music to summon supernatural beings and spirits across time and space, Kpop Demon Hunters explores the mythical ability of music to build barriers between the human and demon worlds.

The blues refer to a genre of music associated with African Americans and can be traced back to African musical traditions. As the term suggests, it is often melancholic and, in its early days, addressed issues of racial oppression and discrimination. The movie Sinners presents the genre as a sinful and dangerous musical form for humans to casually meddle with. Though this is shown as the religious stance taken toward the blues, the characters’ perspectives are less clear-cut, as Sammie goes on to make a career in blues music even after the terrible incident at the Juke Joint.

In contrast, the power of music is portrayed in K-pop Demon Hunters as more protective than harmful. It depicts how the soulful music of the demon-hunter girl group, Huntrix, creates a barrier called a Honmoon, which seals the boundary between the human world and the demon world, thus preventing demons from extracting human souls. This idea is rooted in Korean culture and mythology and draws from the tradition of Shaman women, who sing and dance to protect their communities from evil.

After watching these movies one after the other, I was deeply intrigued by this musical connection. Both films are rich in other significant themes that are equally interesting, but I won’t be going into those here — I’ll leave them for you to discover as you watch the movies.