When you look at your chosen idol, he looks back in Enhypen's VR concert 'Destiny'

How much eye contact can you fit into a 50-minute concert?

Yes.

That, I imagined, was Enhypen’s answer as I found myself in a silent staring contest with member Sunghoon during the boy band’s virtual reality (VR) concert, “Destiny,” at a screening at Lotte Cinema World Tower in southern Seoul.

The singer appeared close enough for me to see the moles on his face, surrounding his serene smile. Around me, I could hear fans — also wearing VR headsets — scream whenever their “bias,” or favorite member, seemed to look them straight in the eye.

And, man, did he keep looking.

Front row everywhere

VR concerts are hardly new in K-pop, but I had never been to one. When a colleague told me last year that the performers had seemed so close that she’d caught herself almost looking away a few times, I thought of the repeated story about early moviegoers recoiling from the incoming train on screen in “L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat” (1895).

Perhaps because I’d been warned, I held my gaze through the long, closer-than-expected stretches of eye contact. I was surprised by how personalized the VR concert felt.

By “personalized,” I mean that you could actually choose the “main character” of the story from Enhypen’s six members, and he would accompany you throughout the concert.

But I found that “personalized” didn’t translate to “personal” or “private,” given the sea of fans around me. Even as we watched different members reach out their virtual hands to us, we still reacted together to more or less the same moments at the same time in the same theater.

Main character energy

On Sept. 19, the day after screenings began, I entered the theater, followed the instructions on the screen and put on my VR headset. As I waited for the show, a tarot-like card appeared before me. When I reached toward it, a chime rang, and the card flipped to reveal an Enhypen member, who changed each time I tried again.

The chime startled me because it blended in with the music playing in the theater. But others seemed to have heard the same sound, though I couldn’t hear it through their headsets. I also couldn’t hear anyone else’s card turn and only overheard some fans excitedly telling their friends which member they had drawn.

Then came a choice: Which of the six members would accompany me through the show?

I went back and forth between Sunghoon and Jake about three times before settling on the former.

I hadn’t expected the decision to matter so much.

At the start of the concert, as I walked through what looked like an empty cathedral, Sunghoon appeared beside me. He appeared in a similar manner three or four times between performances, including one instance in which the sextet turned to leave, only for Sunghoon to stop halfway, look back and walk toward me — which meant they had to film the scene at least six times, once for each member to be in the spotlight.

Everyone in the theater watched their chosen member turn back and hold their gaze in silence — if there were dialogue, each member would have had to say the same words at the same pace — which, in my opinion, possibly made the eye contact feel longer than it actually was. Regardless, the fans went wild.

Chased into the story

To fully understand the premise of “Destiny,” you first need to know one thing about Enhypen.

The group’s music has long drawn on a romantic vampire narrative, in which its members — Sunghoon, Jay, Jake, Jungwon, Sunoo and Ni-Ki — are portrayed as vampires in love with Sooha, a mysterious girl who represents Engene, the collective name for its fans.

As of the latest EPs released this year, “The Sin: Vanish” and “The Sin: Bliss,” the members have eloped with their human lover, defying vampire society, and are now on the run.

“Destiny” loosely extends that story, and the group fully leans into VR’s strength to bring out the thrill of the pursuit.

Early in the show, I found myself in a car chase. Each near miss drew gasps from the theater, and when the vehicle that I was in crashed, those gasps became shouts. Then Enhypen launched into “Knife” in the middle of the car’s wreckage, making the room erupt again — this time in screams of delight.

Across nine performances, the setting shifted from a ruined road to what appeared to be a cave hideout. The viewpoint moved among the members, bringing them close to the audience and prompting cheers.

Parasocial much?

“I’m really curious whom [each] Engene chose as their main character,” Sunoo said near the end of the show, when the members paused to address fans. “But whoever you’ve chosen, remember that the main character of our story is you.”

The line neatly captured what “Destiny” has been offering: a story that seemed to make room for me, right down to the member who looked back.

It also left me wondering whether this kind of immersion might deepen the feeling of a parasocial relationship, or one-sided sense of closeness, which already runs through so much K-pop content, especially if VR headsets become more accessible to a wider audience.

But the moments I enjoyed most never felt like they belonged to me alone. Someone beside me could be seeing Jake where I saw Sunghoon, yet we gasped at the same crash and screamed at the same glance.

Before the show, fans had chatted about the unfamiliar sensation of the headsets. But once the first notes of “Knife” began, they seemed to lose themselves in the performance. For me, their voices were part of what made “Destiny” feel like a concert.

While the concert was tailored to each headset, the excitement traveled across the theater, which made the experience more collective than private.

The screening of “Destiny” runs from Sept. 18 to Nov. 8 and is available at Lotte Cinema World Tower in Songpa District, southern Seoul, and Lotte Cinema’s Hongik University location in Mapo District, western Seoul.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [[email protected]]