I’d bet my last tree star on it.
KPop Demon Hunters landed on Netflix in June 2025 and everyone promptly lost their minds. Hundreds of millions of views. A theatrical run, which almost never happens for a Netflix Original that started life on the streamer. The whole thing got so big, so fast, that retail companies are still scrambling to catch up with merchandise like Lego sets and video games.
And look, I get it. The songs stick in your head for days and the movie is funnier and more action-packed than anyone had a right to expect.
But while the rest of the internet is still doing victory laps, I want to gently point out that Netflix has other animated movies. Better ones, if you’ll let me say so. Some have stood the test of time. Some brought something genuinely new to fandoms that have been around forever. And some went straight to Netflix, made a much smaller splash, and are arguably superior anyway.
So if you’re a little worn out by KPop Demon Hunters-mania, scroll right past it and try these five instead.
The one that shares KPop Demon Hunters’ DNA
The Mitchells vs. the Machines has more in common with the movie of the moment than you’d guess. Both are animated features produced by Sony Pictures Animation. Both went directly to Netflix. The Mitchells cleared over 50 million views on the platform in its first month, which isn’t in the same universe as what KPop Demon Hunters pulled off, but it made the film one of the biggest releases of the pandemic era.
Written and directed by Mike Rianda, it follows the deeply dysfunctional Mitchell family on a road trip to drop Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) off at college. Then the robot apocalypse arrives and every human on Earth except the Mitchells gets abducted by a megalomaniacal AI system.
The laughs land and the art style, which blends 3D and 2D elements, doesn’t look like anything else. But the reason the movie sticks is how personal it feels. The family dynamics ring true because they were lifted more or less verbatim from Rianda’s own family, something the filmmaker discussed at length for the film’s fifth anniversary.
The kids’ movie about attempted murder
First time I watched The Willoughbys, I would have sworn it came from a Roald Dahl story. It’s a dark comedy aimed at children about four weirdo kids whose parents are so horrible and neglectful that the children decide to kill them by engineering the deadliest possible vacation.
It’s not Dahl. It’s based on a book by Lois Lowry, the Newbery Medal-winning author behind The Giver and plenty more.
I’ll still defend the comparison. Director Kris Pearn works with a childlike whimsy that runs alongside humor far too grim for the target audience, delivered with such a silly, artful touch that nobody could possibly take it seriously. The packaging screams “just for kids.” The movie is enormously fun at any age, and this straight-to-Netflix title deserves a much bigger audience than it got.
The Turtles movie that converted the haters
Among the many versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the 2018 series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might be the most divisive. It built a rabid fanbase and drew a steady stream of online scorn from old-school TMNT loyalists. The devoted point to the high-quality animation and the sharp, fast, funny writing. The critics point to everything the show changed: an altered origin story, Master Splinter (Eric Bauza) recast as kind of a jerk, Raphael (Omar Miller) leading the team, Leonardo (Ben Schwartz) reduced to a smartass quipster.
Then Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie hit Netflix in 2022, and a lot of fans who couldn’t stand the series were blown away.
It’s set in a future where a brain-like alien race called the Krang has taken over Earth. To stop the invasion before it starts, young soldier Casey Jones (Haley Joel Osment) gets sent back to the early 2020s by his commander, Leonardo. Casey then has to push the young, mouthy Leo into finding his inner leader and stopping the Krang.
It’s the story of Leonardo becoming Leonardo. That’s why such a wide cross-section of TMNT fans fell for it. Perfect might be a stretch, but if the Turtles mean anything to you, this one’s essential.
Don Bluth’s dinosaur heartbreaker
Netflix doesn’t only have its own animated movies. It also carries a few genuine classics, and none better than The Land Before Time, a sweet, funny, beautifully animated tearjerker from animation legend Don Bluth. A gang of mismatched orphan dinosaurs sets out for the great valley, a lush stretch of land thick with vegetation that their herd has left for because of famine.
Bluth was hired by Walt Disney in 1955 and spent decades at the studio before resigning over creative differences and founding Don Bluth Productions in 1979. His studio didn’t survive the 1990s. But in the 1980s it turned out a run of wonderful films, including An American Tail in 1986 and The Land Before Time in 1988, both carrying as much heart, humor and gorgeous animation as the best Disney ever made.
The Oscar winner with a tougher field
Yes, KPop Demon Hunters won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2026 Oscars. So did Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, in a year with much tighter competition.
Miles Morales inherits the Spider-Man mantle after the death of Peter Parker, and after a radioactive spider gets to him too. His first real outing as Spider-Man turns interdimensional when Kingpin tears open the multiverse and drops several other spider-powered heroes into his home dimension.
People love it for the breakthrough animation, which celebrated the art of comic books more fully than maybe any animated film before it. The cast is killer. The story earned every bit of the trilogy it kicked off.
And the soundtrack tops KPop Demon Hunters. I said what I said.
