After a four year long break following the release of “Crybaby”, Melanie Martinez recently released her new pop-surrealism album entitled “K-12”. On Sept. 5, she debuted a 90-minute-long film which combined the tracks with stunning visuals and a complicated story line surrounding her character from her previous album, Crybaby.

The film had a pink, Victorian style aesthetic with a few eerie touches in order to display the darker, more controversial subjects within her songs. The movie targets themes such as body dysmorphia, mental illness, rape culture, corruption in authority and substance abuse with haunting vocals beside upbeat melodies and sing-songy nursery rhymes. In this day and age, I feel as though it is important for any influential artist to discuss topics like this and release it to an audience with varying demographics. This is something Martinez was able to do seamlessly.

However, the film wasn’t perfect. The acting in between the musical scenes seemed forced and awkward, and a few takes were jumbled and out of place. At some points it seemed as though certain parts of the movie were cut out, and the musical scenes often times were back to back which gave me the impression that the filler was cut. Although the flow of the movie was slightly off, the visuals made up for it and made the scenes cohesive.

Overall, the film was beautifully created. The colors, scenery, costumes and choreography were extremely pleasing to the eye and matched the film’s vibe very well. The stylistic choices in the  music were very similar to “Crybaby”, but it was intentional and necessary in order to keep the character’s aesthetic from the original album. The issues which were discussed were very important and more serious than in “Crybaby”, which I can appreciate and admire from Martinez. The film was an amazing idea, and I feel as though this film and album was a bold comeback.

8/10