Psycho's Movie Reviews #131: K-12 (2019)

K-12 is a 2019 American musical fantasy horror film written and directed by Melanie Martinez and co-directed by Alissa Torvinen, that accompanied her second studio album of the same name. It stars Martinez, Emma Harvey, Zión Moreno, Megan Gage, Zinnett Hendrix, Jesy McKinney, Marsalis Wilson, and Maggie Budzyna. The film follows Cry Baby (played by Martinez), a brave-hearted girl, and her charming best friend, who make a bewitching pair as they embark on a mission to take down the oppressive schooling system of K-12.

In a 2017 interview with Billboard, Martinez said that her then-untitled second studio album was finished and would be accompanied by a film that she was writing and directing and that it would be "all of the videos together of the next record, all thirteen, with dialogue and whatnot in between connecting all of them together." It was filmed in Budapest, Hungary, over a span of 31 days.

K-12 was shown in select theatres for one day only on September 5, 2019, and was officially released on September 6, 2019, by Abromorama in North American territories and Atlantic Records internationally through YouTube. The film received favourable reviews from critics and fans alike, who praised its production values, themes, and songs, but criticism for its screenplay, acting and special effects.

Plot

Cry Baby wakes up to prepare for her first day at K-12 Sleepaway School. She rides the school bus with her best friend, Angelita, where she is tormented and bullied by her schoolmates ("Wheels on the Bus"). When the bus loses control and plunges into the water, Cry Baby and Angelita reveal supernatural abilities that allow them to lift the bus into the sky and land outside of K-12.

After Cry Baby and Angelita arrive late to class, the students are called to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. A boy named Henry refuses in protest, and is forcibly removed. During class, Kelly, a popular but cruel girl, grows jealous of Cry Baby after seeing her flirting with her boyfriend Brandon. Kelly throws a ball of paper at Cry Baby, threatening to attack her at recess. Angelita advises Cry Baby to use her powers to fight, but Cry Baby insists it's cheating. She reluctantly telephones her mother for advice, who doesn't respond ("Class Fight"). During the fight, Cry Baby's powers are triggered, causing her and Kelly to levitate, and they are later sent to the principal's office.

The principal reprimands Ms. Harper, a transgender teacher, and fires her. Cry Baby discovers he is forcing medication on students to control them. Cry Baby criticizes the principal through the phone for his oppressive behaviour. He is then poisoned but recovers promptly ("The Principal"). Cry Baby arrives late to class and is turned into a marionette puppet ("Show & Tell"). After being sent to the nurse's office, she meets with Angelita. The nurses restrain them and force medication upon them ("Nurse's Office"). They are saved by Lilith, an angelic spirit guide, who appears in a gate and tells them they must stay in K-12.

In drama class, Cry Baby requests to be assigned a less domestic role, but is ridiculed ("Drama Club"). During the school play, Cry Baby snaps and urges the audience to wake from their brainwashed state, using her abilities to free them. Cry Baby and Angelita lead the students to the principal's office, where they proceed to kill him. After burying the principal, Cry Baby and Angelita meet with Celeste, a friend with the same abilities. Cry Baby is shown in the changing room and school pool, expressing that she feels her body is objectified, addressing rape culture and victim blaming. She is placed atop a cake, as boys steal and devour pieces against her will ("Strawberry Shortcake").

At lunch, Kelly takes Cry Baby to her lunch table. After explaining she doesn't want to be friends, she leaves and befriends a girl named Magnolia ("Lunchbox Friends"). The group notices that Fleur, a friend of Kelly, has the same abilities. In an attempt to separate her from Kelly, they start a food fight. Cry Baby follows Fleur to the bathroom, learning she is bulimic. She shows compassion towards Fleur and the two become friends ("Orange Juice"). Cry Baby is sent to detention, after Kelly snitches to Leo, the principal's son. Her powers weaken but she manipulates Leo into releasing her ("Detention").

A boy named Ben slips an anonymous love letter into Cry Baby's locker. The girls devise a plan to destroy the school, which Leo detects on security footage. Angelita and her biology teacher begin flirting. After class, he makes her shrink and tries to dissect her. Cry Baby uses her powers to stop him, and Angelita slashes him in revenge ("Teacher's Pet"). Cry Baby emphasizes her desire for a partner who is loyal and loves her for who she is ("High School Sweethearts").

Ben prepares to ask Cry Baby to the school dance but Leo foils his plan. Leo falsely confesses to Cry Baby that he wrote the letter; after inviting her, she eagerly accepts. Cry Baby arrives at the dance, much to the girls' surprise. They disapprove after learning she accepted Leo's offer. Realising she ruined the plan, she runs away. Leo declares over the loudspeaker he was aware of the plan and locks the seniors inside ("Recess"). Cry Baby disguises herself as a woman named Lorelai, deceiving Leo and locking him inside a closet. She instructs the students to evacuate the school over the loudspeaker, all of whom flee except Kelly.

Cry Baby tries to escape, when Ben approaches her, confessing he wrote the letter. They decide to blow a spit bubble, encapsulating the school. The two leap to safety as the bubble floats away, with Leo trapped inside. The girls watch below as the school explodes. Lilith reappears in the distance, and they all race towards her gate to return home. As the girls enter, Cry Baby glances back cautiously.

Production

On May 14, 2018, Martinez confirmed that she would be designing the costumes for the film. On September 9, 2018, she confirmed that she would be exploring some of the places in Europe for the film.

On January 2, 2019, Martinez began editing the film. On May 15, 2019, a first teaser was released. On May 22, 2019, a second teaser was released. On May 29, 2019, a third teaser was released revealing the release date. On June 17, 2019, during the MTV Movie Awards, a TV spot was released. On July 23, 2019, the official trailer was released.

Development

In a 2017 interview with Billboard, Martinez said that her then-untitled second studio album was finished and would be accompanied by a film that she was writing and directing and that it would be "all of the videos together of the next record, all thirteen, with dialogue and whatnot in between connecting all of them together." It was filmed in Budapest, Hungary over a span of 31 days.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film was shown in select theatres on September 5, 2019 and was officially released on September 6, 2019, through VOD. It had previously premiered in Los Angeles on September 3, 2019. Martinez also released the film on her YouTube channel for free.

io9 reviewed the film, stating that "When you listen to Melanie Martinez's K-12, the album's themes about bullying, insecurity, and the importance of learning to embrace one's imperfections are all readily apparent. But when you watch the accompanying K-12 film and visually drink in the story Martinez has created, it becomes a much more powerful fairytale about the lives we lead long after leaving school." Idolator also reviewed the movie, praising it for expanding the Cry Baby universe and for its messages.

K-12 grossed $303,230 domestically and an additional $56,147 from international territories, bringing its total worldwide gross to $359,377.

{Then again though, it was released free to watch on Youtube. So that's probably why nobody went to the cinema or bought it on DVD}.

{Umm here, I'll just post the movie here to save you some time}

My Review

For all those expecting to see a feature-length film: this is more like a series of music videos, one after the other, with some dialogue. It's interesting to read that Melanie Martinez, who's responsible for pretty much this whole thing, originally planned it to be much longer and had to cut several scenes to fit the budget. To put it simply, it shows.

From a musical perspective that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The choreography is absolutely outstanding. Martinez is just as good as the professional dancers and their moves fit the themes and moods of the songs. There's diversity among the dancers, too, although given their messages I would have quite liked to see some more variation in body type. The problem is that the powerful emotions Cry Baby displays while she's singing and dancing just aren't carried through into the script.

Honestly, the writing isn't bad, and for someone like Martinez who is known for writing music to branch out into scriptwriting is a brave thing to do. She knows she's putting it out there for criticism and that's what she's going to get. It just lacks something - there are scenes where a song will end with a furious character literally murdering an antagonist only to show the same character blandly smiling and chatting with her friend. It's very obvious where Martinez's talent lies, which is to show emotion through music and dancing; adding dialogue to the mix just seems to complicate things unnecessarily. The images in the film - Martinez holding up an orange as dancers lie around her like a religious painting; a woman cutting open another woman's head; a character about to be dissected by a science teacher - speak louder than the script ever could.

I'll acknowledge the elephant in the room and say that the visuals in this film are absolutely stunning. I've never been a fan of Martinez's pastel aesthetic but this is another level, diluting the cuteness with toned-down shades of pink and blue and imposing camera angles of misty fields so that it is more sophisticatedly sinister than cloying. I found myself wanting to sleep in a bedroom as cosy (and enchanted) as Cry Baby and Angelita's. It is obvious and rewarding how much thought went into hair, costumes and makeup. The special effects are hit and miss - there's one awkward moment where a character stares into a mirror and it shatters, only for it to be left painfully obvious where the shot changed - but when they work, they really work. A school bus goes under the sea and flies through the sky, and this manages to be convincing. Ghosts are ghostly enough. Puppets are enjoyably creepy and two characters even manage to levitate during a playground fight. For all its eerie prettiness, though, there is a frustrating lack of substance.

'Frustrated' is probably an accurate word for how Martinez felt trying to condense a planned three hours' worth of plot into about half that. 'Frustrated' is an accurate word for how viewers will feel when this leaves some characters' stories rushed or untold. It's a sad spoiler alert that the bully character, Kelly, is never given redeeming qualities or even a backstory. We see Cry Baby's mother passed-out drunk and yet Cry Baby still has a home, complete with a magical alarm clock and a pet tarantula, with no other indication of what her home life is like. Cry Baby spends a much too fast-paced section of the film skipping from song to song as she recruits friends, finding one in a cafeteria and introducing her as 'Magnolia' without having even spoken to her (I can just about excuse this scene because of the incredible dancing). On the bus, she talks to Angelita as if they have met before, but this is never explained. She finds another friend, whose name could be Flora or Fleur due to the lacklustre sound editing in the scene, who suffers from an eating disorder. All it takes is a very in-your-face speech about loving yourself from Cry Baby and Flora/Fleur is cured. Martinez checks off a list of societal problems - body image, the patriarchy, transphobia - without devoting more than five minutes to most of them, leaving some subplots that the story would have made sense without. A transgender teacher never gets her acceptance, for example, and the sources of the children's 'powers' are never clarified. Doesn't Kelly have powers? Doesn't Flora? Cry Baby's character can become convoluted due to all the conflicting morals she's pushing - why is she singing about being unsure of her body when she's already made the revelation that bodies are temporary? I couldn't help but think that the messages, especially coupled with the spiritual aspects of the film, were not as subtle as they could have been, though Martinez has demonstrated her mastery of metaphors in the past. It seemed like 'Strawberry Shortcake' and 'The Principal' could have been simplified versions of 'Alphabet Boy', whilst 'Orange Juice' was another level of 'Mrs Potato Head'. This loss of ambiguity in favour of expositional dialogue, as well as errors in pacing in which the lengths of gaps between songs would vary too much or too little, was probably the most disappointing part of the film. Perhaps it's the surrealism causing the confusion - although there are fine lines between fantasy, surrealism and using the above two to justify style over substance, and Martinez has parked her pastel pink school bus over all three.

For all its flaws, it's obviously very worth a watch for fans of Martinez's music and for all who enjoy films with a strong aesthetic, as long as they're willing to settle for some moments of questionable acting (Martinez is actually one of the strongest actors in the cast). It's by no means a triumph of cinema, but for what it was meant to be it's definitely a treat to both listen to and look at. There is a distinct lack of the dark comedy that was promised, and at times it's more like watching a sleekly nightmarish ballet than a human-made film about humans, but it should be considered where it came from. All of it is straight out of the mind of a woman with a clear creative vision, one which she has executed for the first time into a project full of loving detail. It's like Wes Anderson shot a musical based on a fever dream Tim Burton had about Mean Girls. Whilst it's ultimately missing the sarcastic, flawed, slightly scary side of the Cry Baby character we saw from Martinez's first music videos, it's a visually impeccable continuation of her story - and it's definitely a lot more interesting than a typical day at school.

Overall, yeah I recommend you watch it. It's very bizarre but interesting. The songs are good, some better than others. They all deal with multiple messages and make a clear understanding of each. I feel like the ending is a bit abrupt though. Other than that I'll give it a 6.9/10!

{My top 3 favourite songs though}

1} Detention

2} Show And Tell

https://youtu.be/8cXPoQ5WalM?list=TLPQMzAxMjIwMjFLZK5-SXcuDg

3} Recess

https://youtu.be/NWuvOQtzuGE?list=TLPQMzAxMjIwMjFLZK5-SXcuDg