Remus is a writer, editor, journalist, and author with an eye for detail and an extremely active imagination. He is an enthusiast of everything to do with the graphic medium, whether it's Western comics and their adaptations or manga and anime. Remus is also the author of the sci-fantasy novel Once Upon a Time in Hyperspace and several works of short fiction in the mystery, comedy, and horror genres.
Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans's KPop Demon Hunters was a global sensation in 2025, and it's still a widely-loved movie that continues to entertain an international fanbase. Combining inspirations from Korean mythology, K-pop, and anime, the action-packed fantasy musical easily ranks among the best animated films of the decade, and it's a highly rewatchable movie as well. And if you're looking for another great film to watch with KPop Demon Hunters, we have some suggestions.
Over the years, there have been plenty of great movies with energy, music, and aesthetics that pair well with the iconic Netflix film, including several that are available on the same platform. So, here's our selection of action-packed double features that pair perfectly with KPop Demon Hunters.
1 'Nimona' (2023)
Directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane and written by Robert L. Baird and Lloyd Taylor, Nimona is a genre-blending animated film based on ND Stevenson's 2015 graphic novel. Set in a medieval-futuristic kingdom, the movie follows the titular shapeshifter and a knight as they work together to prove the latter's innocence after he's framed for a crime. The film's voice cast is led by Chloë Grace Moretz as Nimona, with Riz Ahmed, Eugene Lee Yang, and Frances Conroy voicing key roles.
A vibrant, high-energy film with prominent LGBTQ+ themes and characters, Nimona was an instant critical darling after its world premiere at the 2023 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Nimona also boasts some brilliant action and an excellent soundtrack, making it one of the few Netflix animated films that match the energy of KPop Demon Hunters. The film is easily one of the best animated movies of the 2020s so far, and it has received several accolades, including two Annie Awards and an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
2 'Turning Red' (2022)
Co-written and directed by Domee Shi, Turning Red is a Disney-Pixar animated coming-of-age fantasy that explores the life of a Chinese-Canadian teenager growing up in Toronto in the 2000s. Rosalie Chiang stars as the voice of Meilin "Mei" Lee, whose life takes an unexpected turn when she starts transforming into a giant red panda whenever she experiences strong emotions. The ensemble voice cast also includes Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and Orion Lee.
From its authentic cultural representation to the fact that it's the first Pixar movie solely directed by a female director, there are a lot of things about Turning Red that make it a notable, groundbreaking film of the 2020s. Taking inspiration from anime classics and Domee Shi's personal experiences growing up in Toronto, the movie is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age film with a moving story, gorgeous animation, and compelling performances, not to mention a killer pop-infused soundtrack featuring original music by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell.
3 'Big Hero 6' (2014)
Loosely inspired by the Marvel Comics superhero team, Big Hero 6 is an animated superhero movie directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams. Set in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo, the film follows robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter), who seeks revenge against the villain responsible for his older brother Tadashi's death with the help of his brother's friends and Baymax, a kindly healthcare robot designed by Tadashi. The voice cast includes Scott Adsit, Daniel Henney, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr., Genesis Rodriguez, James Cromwell, Maya Rudolph, and Alan Tudyk.
An imaginative take on superheroes with impeccable visual design, Big Hero 6 is arguably one of the best Disney animated films of all time, and it was a major hit when it came out in 2014, becoming the highest-grossing animated movie of the year. Its visual perfection is matched by a fun, exciting, and deeply emotional narrative, which earned it near-universal acclaim. The film received many prestigious awards, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and it was followed by three TV sequels: Big Hero 6: The Series, Baymax Dreams, and Baymax!.
COLLIDER.
Collider · Quiz
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be -- and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
QUESTION 1 / 10TONE
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain -- they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out -- that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming -- funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty -- a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring -- a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless -- pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
QUESTION 2 / 10THEME
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
QUESTION 3 / 10STRUCTURE
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting -- I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending -- comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear -- cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow -- I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise -- every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
QUESTION 4 / 10VILLAIN
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system -- invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self -- the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory -- the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry -- the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil -- a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
QUESTION 5 / 10ENDING
05
What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability -- a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion -- I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur -- an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity -- something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness -- an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
QUESTION 6 / 10WORLD
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything -- mood, stakes, what's even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside -- beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite -- the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point -- where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood -- fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape -- desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
QUESTION 7 / 10CRAFT
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature -- a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène -- every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control -- the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design -- music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance -- the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint -- what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
QUESTION 8 / 10PROTAGONIST
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
QUESTION 9 / 10PACE
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic -- patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum -- I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me -- if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening -- restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried -- I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
QUESTION 10 / 10AFTERMATH
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled -- like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised -- like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled -- like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated -- like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted -- like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is...
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
BEST PICTURE 2020
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously -- that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that -- a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
BEST PICTURE 2023
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all -- and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point -- because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.
BEST PICTURE 2024
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale -- films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important -- to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
BEST PICTURE 2015
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction -- that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else -- a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
BEST PICTURE 2008
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil -- implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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4 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' (2018)
An animated superhero film inspired by the iconic Marvel Comics character, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. The movie follows Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a young boy who gains superpowers after being bitten by a spider and becomes the new Spider-Man, teaming up with other Spider-People from parallel worlds to save his universe. The ensemble voice cast also includes Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Vélez, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, and Liev Schreiber.
KPop Demon Hunters' elevated animation style has played a big part in making it such a celebrated hit, but Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the movie that pushed the animation industry to its current heights. A groundbreaking film that combines computer animation with hand-drawn comic-book-style illustration, the movie redefined how animated superhero films are made, with aesthetics and energy that far surpass any other within the genre. The film earned several awards as well, and it has spawned a successful franchise that includes 2023's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, which is set to arrive in 2027.
5 'The Tiger's Apprentice' (2024)
Based on the 2003 novel by Laurence Yep, The Tiger's Apprentice is an animated fantasy film directed by Raman Hui and co-directed by Paul Watling and Yong Duk Jhun in their directorial debuts. Brandon Soo Hoo stars as the voice of Tom Lee, a Chinese-American teenager who learns that he's the heir to a magical lineage and trains with mythical animal warriors to protect the world from evil. The movie also features Henry Golding, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, and Michelle Yeoh in key voice roles.
The Tiger's Apprentice had a very mixed critical reception when it premiered in 2024, and though it was more popular with audiences, the film never really made much of a mark. However, while the story is fairly predictable, the movie's visuals and action are top-notch, and it's a far more enjoyable experience than the reviews would have you believe. And more to the point, the film's energy, aesthetics, and imaginative reinterpretation of mythology make it the perfect companion for KPop Demon Hunters.
6 'Kubo and the Two Strings' (2016)
A stop-motion animated fantasy film set in feudal Japan, Kubo and the Two Strings was produced by Laika and directed by Travis Knight. The movie follows the titular Kubo, a one-eyed 12-year-old who wields a magical shamisen, as he embarks on a mystical quest with the help of three strange companions. Art Parkinson stars as the voice of Kubo, with Charlize Theron, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, George Takei, Matthew McConaughey, and more in notable roles.
Kubo and the Two Strings may not be an internationally beloved movie like KPop Demon Hunters, but it's easily one of the greatest musical fantasy films ever made, and a true animation masterpiece. The movie takes audiences on a magical and deeply emotional journey that the whole family can enjoy, further elevated by its music and breathtaking animation. Widely praised for its story, production, performances, and score, the film earned several accolades in its day, including a BAFTA for Best Animated Film, but it's not as widely recognized today as it ought to be.
7 'Ultraman: Rising' (2024)
A CG-animated reimagining of the iconic Ultraman franchise, Ultraman: Rising is an animated superhero film directed by Shannon Tindle in his feature directorial debut. The movie follows Ken Sato (Christopher Sean), a professional baseball player who returns to Japan from America to take over from his estranged father as the new Ultraman, protecting the world from dangerous kaiju monsters, but his life takes an unexpected turn when he adopts a baby kaiju. A Japanese-American co-production, with animation by Industrial Light & Magic, the movie features Gedde Watanabe, Tamlyn Tomita, Keone Young, and Julia Harriman in supporting voice roles.
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Ultraman: Rising was an unexpectedly well-received film when it premiered in 2024, taking a fresh approach to its large-than-life protagonist that humanizes the popular extraterrestrial superhero and brings some welcome warmth to the narrative. The movie was widely praised by critics and fans for its animation, story, and performances, and it went on to win numerous accolades, including three Children's and Family Emmy Awards. The film is a great entry point for viewers who are new to the franchise as well, and it's arguably one of the most underrated animated films available on Netflix.
8 'Over the Moon' (2020)
An animated musical fantasy inspired by Chinese mythology, Over the Moon is the final film written by Audrey Wells, to whom the movie is dedicated. Directed by Glen Keane, the film follows Fei Fei, a spirited young girl struggling with the loss of her mother, as she builds a rocket ship to prove that the stories her mother told her about the moon goddess, Chang'e, are true. The voice cast stars Cathy Ang as Fei Fei and Phillipa Soo as Chang'e, with other notable characters voiced by Ken Jeong, John Cho, Ruthie Ann Miles, Margaret Cho, and Sandra Oh.
A criminally underrated film, Over the Moon is a beautiful and emotional animated movie that combines mythological influences, vibrant art, and heavy themes of grief and acceptance. Elevated by its pitch-perfect performances and energetic soundtrack, the movie was highly acclaimed by critics in its day, garnering nominations for six Annie Awards and an Academy Award. Though it's often overlooked these days, Over the Moon is a colorful and engaging animated movie that paved the way for later, more successful films like Turning Red and KPop Demon Hunters.
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Over the Moon
PG
Adventure
Comedy
Animation
Release Date October 23, 2020
Runtime 95 minutes
Director John Kahrs, Glen Keane
Writers Jennifer Yee McDevitt, Audrey Wells
Cast
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