Nightmare Fuel / Melanie Martinez

You think I'm psycho, you think I'm gone.
Tell the psychiatrist something is wrong.

Cry Baby's world is full of childish and cute designs, but stay longer and you'll see that this world is not that sweet... One question: Are you afraid of dolls?

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Cry Baby

"Cry Baby"

• The Doctor Rabbit, anyone? He seems like any other doctor doing his job, but that bunny mask is off-putting. The sequence where we see him use the pregnant mother's stomach as a pinata (symbolizing Cry Baby's birth) doesn't help much either.
• The nurse with black eyes is pretty spooky too. Like the Doctor, she seems to be doing her job, and even shows concern for Cry Baby. Still, black eyes. Why would someone want to go to this hospital?
• Also a Tear Jerker, but Cry Baby's mother has already started being abusive not long after her birth. She's smoking both before and after the actual birth. She has no interest in holding her, and instead complains that the child is a "cry baby." This leaves her brother (who looks about seven) to name her such. She also drinks while feeding Cry Baby. Even without knowing the rest of the story, you just know she'd go on to have an unhappy life.
• Ever had a fear of your toys coming to life and attacking you as a kid? Well, one scene in the video immortalizes that fear by showing it happening to Cry Baby.

"Dollhouse"

• The Uncanny Valley all throughout the video. You see people acting like dolls with stiff movements, especially Cry Baby. Cry Baby is wearing various accessories in the video, but one is a necklace of two doll arms holding eyeballs. Oh, and there are some doll parts in Cry Baby's room, some missing eyes. If you're afraid of dolls, welcome to your worst nightmare.
• Listen to the lyrics sometime. "We'll be a perfect family, when you walk away, it's when we really play..."
• At one point, a little girl is trapped in the dollhouse, about to be cornered by Cry Baby's family. Thankfully, she escaped.

"Sippy Cup"

• What were you expecting from a song starting with "Blood still stains when the sheets are washed"?
• Although sad, the Mom crying and murdering her husband and his mistress is brutal.
• Cry Baby discovering her father's corpse before getting drugged and then tied by her mother. You can only be glad that she wasn't murdered.
  • Fans were actually questioning whether or not Crybaby actually died or not (as she is seen as an angel). Thankfully, this turns out to just be symbolic of her fully losing her innocence. Not that that's any better.

"Carousel"

• The song made it to American Horror Story. That says a lot.
• The ringmaster is terrifying as fuck. Then you start to realize that he is probably Cry Baby's love interest...
• Hell, the whole video is a horrific circus with frightening twins, maybe conjoined by the head, a tattooed man or the ghostly attractions.

"Alphabet Boy"

• The song is considered to be tamer compared to the other videos, but in it, it has stabbing the camera and licking a knife in it. The knife is covered by red jam, but, of course, you don't know this when Cry Baby starts licking it, so it's easy to believe she's cutting open her tongue.
• Cry Baby's behavior shows that she is losing it at certain points.

"Soap"

• Who could have thought that a music video about an attractive young man in a bathtub could be that scary?
• Enjoy dubstep? Yes or no, you have to agree that the sound of bubbles and the sight of someone drowning is twisted.
• At one point, a toaster falls in the bathtub, while someone is still in it...

"Pity Party"

• Oh boy, where we should begin... The video is cute at first, but you're seeing the dolls looking at you through the screen, listening to the lyrics, and we all know it's just a matter of time until the madness begins.
• Seeing loneliness driving someone that insane is depressing but also terrifying, Cry Baby is laughing and crying at the same time, stabbing and destroying her toys, then she decides to smash her cake, and letting her house catch on fire.
  I'm laughing, I'm crying, it feels like I'm dying.

"Tag, You're It"

• Should we start with the Wolf? For one, he preys on people with his ice cream truck, and at the end, we see him sweetly offer some drugged ice cream to Cry Baby for free before pulling her into his truck. We see him caress his knife, then wave at a school bus. By the way, he's represented by a man wearing an utterly creepy and realistic wolf mask.
• For some reason, the Cashier at the grocery store has black eyes, much like the Nurse in "Cry Baby". She seems helpful, since she gives Cry Baby the melatonin. That said, there's a theory that she was a victim of the Wolf herself...
• Some of Melanie's behavior and facial expressions in this video don't look right. This happens right after "Pity Party", so she's probably still not feeling entirely herself.
• The upside? There are no parental worries in this music video, as her parents won't miss her because Cry Baby's father is dead and her mother lost her mind! Well, not a great upside.... Poor Cry Baby.
• The lyrics are pretty horrifying, too. From the chorus:
  Running through the parking lot
  He chased me and he wouldn't stop
  Tag, you're it, tag, tag, you're it
  Grabbed my hand
  Pushed me down
  Took the words right out my mouth
  Tag, you're it, tag, tag, you're it
  Can anybody hear me?
  I'm hidden under ground
  Can anybody hear me?
  Am I talking to myself?
  Saying, "tag, you're it, tag, tag, you're it"
  He's saying, "tag, you're it, tag, tag, you're it"

"Milk and Cookies"

• Can the Wolf become scarier? Yes! He has enslaved Cry Baby and has ordered her to make cookies, spying on the kitchen with cameras, just to be absolutely certain that she's doing as she's told. Later, he reaches out to touch Cry Baby's hair, with her visibly recoiling.
• The shots where Cry Baby's head is in a glass dome and covered in ice cream is a bizarre image by itself. But who's to say that it wouldn't have been Cry Baby if she hadn't poisoned the wolf?
• Even if the wolf had it coming, the way he dies is pretty horrifying. Choking on poisoned cookies while being beaten by Cry Baby is not a fun way to go.

"Pacify Her"

• Blue Boy’s appearance can be rather unsettling.
• Cry Baby snapping off her own head to impress Blue Boy, it’s bloodless and she’s fine afterwards but still not a pretty sight.

"Mrs. Potato Head"

• The Bunny Doctor is back! What does he do? Well, he's the one giving Mrs. Potato Head her surgery, which we get to see in clinical detail. Isn't it lovely?
• We get to see the aftermath of the surgery, and it's not pretty. It's not particularly gruesome, but it does look like realistic disfigurements. What truly makes it horrifying, though, is the part where because her surgery failed, she has to live with the regret of ruining her appearance and the end of her relationship. Needless to say, it doubles as a Tear Jerker.
• The introduction has Cry Baby clearly not doing so well. After seeing commercials for weight loss pills and blonde wigs, she immediately goes to the bathroom. There, she puts toilet paper down her blouse, applies makeup, puts on a wig, and takes a pill. The thing is, she's both crying and laughing at the same time, smearing makeup all over her face.

"Mad Hatter"

• Mad Hatter is full of Deranged Animation and Surreal Horror:
  • The Nurse, Cashier, and Bunny Doctor are back! The Nurse and Cashier, in all their black-eyed glory, appear right at the start, and the Bunny Doctor is apparently Cry Baby's therapist. After she wakes up from her dream, Cry Baby also gets black eyes.
  • The creepy doll people that terrorize Cry Baby throughout the video fit. They look so off.
  • The first time the line "I'm peeling the skin off my face" is sung, we get a graphic depiction of Cry Baby... doing just that. For some reason, it makes two of the doll people's faces melt.
  • Cry Baby's friends in this video are represented by giant Rushton Dolls, who are shown to stab the doll people when they try to eat her. They're meant to be friendly and helpful, but they're still pretty dang creepy.
  • Cry Baby eating a donut. That doesn't sound so bad, but said donut is alive, clearly terrified and bleeds when she bites it. If you look closely, the other Anthropomorphic Food in the same scene have shell-shocked looks as they back away. Shades of Sausage Party, much? It's bad enough to become the page image.

"Deluxe and Bonus Tracks"

• The video for Play Date showing 2 dolls, similarly uncanny to the ones from Mad Hatter, getting into a quarrel, ending with the two of them covered in blood.

• In "Teddy Bear", the singer's boyfriend turns abusive, Yandere and homicidal.
  When you started talking in your sleep
  Saying things you'd do to me
  I didn't care, I wasn't scared
  Now I'm finding knives under the sheets
  Crumpled photographs of me
  I'm in despair
  Should I be scared?

• "Gingerbread Man". The song in itself is eerie because of the strange music and the cannibalism metaphors.

K-12 / After School EP

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