Secrets, Stardom, and the Sound of Perfection

Read Time:5 Minute, 42 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
The Rising Girls of K-Pop: Confidential
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Genre: Documentary, Music, Pop Culture
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 18m
Director(s): Robert C. Kiviat
Where to Watch: debuting on VOD November 4, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: THE RISING GIRLS OF K-POP: CONFIDENTIAL wants you to believe it’s cracking open a massive pop culture mystery. What it actually does is spend most of its runtime complaining about one of the most normal, unmysterious things in modern music: backing tracks.

It’s wild, because K-pop is currently reshaping the global music landscape — not in theory, not in niche corners of fandom, but everywhere. The rise of girl groups has been one of the most exciting shifts in pop over the last decade. The talent, the choreography, the stagecraft, the fandom energy — all of it deserves a documentary that celebrates and examines it with passion and understanding. Instead, this film keeps tripping over its own premise.

Robert C. Kiviat — a longtime TV investigative producer — approaches K-pop like he’s trying to expose a scandal. He’s openly a prog-rock guy (which is fine), but he cannot get over the fact that artists perform with audio support. He circles this point again… and again… and again as if he’s discovered something shocking that no one has ever found before. As if literally every major artist across every genre doesn’t rely on backing tracks in some capacity. He treats one of the most normal aspects of live performance like Watergate set to bubblegum beats. The result? A documentary that feels out of touch with the very topic it’s chasing.

This should have been a joyful exploration of why girl groups are dominating global charts — what makes the visuals so sharp, the production so polished, the artistry so disciplined. Instead, the constant framing suggests that if the vocals aren’t always 100% live while these performers are dancing full-out for two hours straight, then something shady must be going on. It’s a bad-faith argument delivered without realizing it’s bad faith.

And here’s the thing — I wanted to like this. I went in ready to like this. I’ve been a growing fan of K-pop, having explored the genre more and more over the years. The music is fun, the groups are endlessly talented, and there’s a story here about creativity, hard work, training systems, and cultural influence. There are moments where the documentary stumbles into that world, such as performance footage, glimpses of other rising acts, and brief bursts of energy that remind you why people fall in love with this genre.

Those moments are the only reason this didn’t land at rock bottom. They’re bright sparks trapped in a project that doesn’t know how to showcase them. Every time the film starts to get interesting — boom — we’re yanked back into another monologue about authenticity, as if “authentic” means “standing still and singing perfectly into a microphone.” The irony is painful: the film inadvertently reveals just how hard this work is, even as it dismisses it. You can admire the attempt to question artistic norms, but when the argument is this drawn out, it becomes noise. Worse, it feels disrespectful to performers who are literally pushing human capability on stage regularly.

There’s also a lack of structure that keeps the film from ever finding a tone. Is it meant to be a fan’s journey? A cultural study? A takedown of performance techniques? The answer shifts as often as the footage does. The documentary aims to be critical, but it doesn’t seem to understand the world well enough to critique it effectively. The filmmaking feels more like a late-night YouTube rant stretched out into a feature-length production. Even unintentionally, it comes across as cranky — the cinematic equivalent of, “Kids these days don’t sing like they used to!”

What hurts most is that the potential was right there. K-pop girl groups deserve a documentary that amplifies their voices, showcases the innovation behind the scenes, and celebrates the global community that makes the genre thrive (and there may well be some out there that do.) Something fun. Something insightful. Something respectful. A film that celebrates the genre and its impact on the modern zeitgeist. Instead, this feels like the exact opposite: a film that doesn’t get why K-pop matters — or worse, doesn’t think it does.

There is value here, but it’s almost entirely disconnected from the filmmaker’s intentions. I left the movie with a few new groups added to my playlist and some excitement to explore more performances online. The credit for that enthusiasm goes to the artists featured, not the documentary that framed them like a case study in supposed industry shortcuts. So yes, I genuinely wanted this to succeed. But THE RISING GIRLS OF K-POP: CONFIDENTIAL talks over the music instead of listening to it — and you can feel that disconnect from the first minute to the last. This just proves that Kiviat can’t escape his norms of ALIENS ON THE MOON: THE TRUTH EXPOSED, I SHOT JFK: THE SHOCKING TRUTH, and BEST UFO CASES EVER CAUGHT ON TAPE. I would suggest he stick to UNSOLVED MYSTERY-style documentaries in the future (which he was a research producer on, so I suppose that makes sense.)

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[photo courtesy of RKP FILMS, UNCORK’D ENTERTAINMENT]

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