Friday, February 24, 2012

M83 - “Midnight City”



  We start out with some child being escorted down a hallway by a bigger person, at least I’m assuming that’s the case, since we can only see walking feet and a stretch of boring floor. We might be in a hospital or a detention facility, anything is possible these days with all the processed sugar in our diets. Then we see the big man leading the little boy into a large room where other kids are sitting at work tables. No one appears to be very happy, despite the presence of a really interesting marble fireplace that might have belonged to Napoleon before that Waterloo mess.

  The original boy is shoved at one of the empty tables, and then we get jump shots of the other sad kids as they go about doing whatever it is they are doing. One girl appears to be using ESP to determine what’s on a series of cards (probably don’t want to get into a game of poker with her), a very small girl is sprawled on the floor and doodling cryptic artwork, and another boy is levitating a Rubik’s cube above his head (something we all wished we could do when we couldn’t figure the damn thing out). This is not your average daycare facility. Something tells me you don’t want to sample the juice and cookies at snack time.

  Suddenly, all the mystical activity comes to a halt, and the various children turn and glare at the new boy, which is standard procedure when new boys walk into a place where children gather. In this case, however, their rudeness might be justified, since the new boy’s eyes are glowing in a way that eyes should not glow. He seems to have done something telepathic that caused their experiments to short-circuit and the levitation to cease. This is the point where people who like committees should form one to investigate Glowing Boy and his issues.

  Instead, we cut to (presumably) later that night, in a dormitory setting where Glowing Boy is slumbering whilst various other students/captives stare at him in a dissatisfied manner. Glowing Boy’s eyes pop open, and he heads toward the doors of the sleep chamber. The other kids fall in line behind him, perhaps on the off chance that he knows about a really good late-night diner with cheese fries, and they all want them some of that.

  Glowing Boy blows open said doors with his mind, and then all the kids are off and running, navigating ornate stairwells and eventually escaping the confines of their odd little school. (The fact that we don’t see any security-type people attempting to stop them indicates that the staff is either stupid or dead. Details are not given.) The children race across a pretty field and then into a dark forest. This would not be my choice of destination, having seen “The Blair Witch Project”. Then again, I can’t move objects with my mind, so our backgrounds are a little different.

  The kids race through the trees for a while, with none of them smiling, so it’s possible that they will never be happy without the proper medication. Then they seem to meet up with some folks who are carrying flashlights and fully expecting them, so maybe there’s a very fine plan that someone has hatched. Or maybe the kids just enjoy portable lighting. Still no smiling, though.

  Next we see the kids trudging along and finally meandering out of the woods. It’s daylight now, so the little urchins have been at it for a while and are probably regretting the non-raiding of snack-filled vending machines before they hauled ass away from the Academy of Unpleasantness and Odd Behavior. They come upon a very large building and head inside. Perhaps this is where they are planning to meet Professor Xavier and request an official school transfer.

  The inside of the immense, cavernous building is in a considerable state of disrepair and dustiness. This inspires the children to immediately begin running around and performing acts of random vandalism. Perhaps they found this to be a very festive menu option, but I’m not sure what the actual point might have been. In any case, some of them finally start smiling, especially the tiniest youngster, the diminutive Picasso that we first spied scribbling masterpieces whilst sitting on the floor at the beginning of the video. She really enjoys the destruction, so it’s clear that her future romantic relationships will be troubling.

  The kids finally settle down and begin practicing and fine-tuning their superpowers. One teen boy, with long golden hair from the Lucius Malfoy line of hair products, manages to juggle three big tires high in the air with just his mind and outstretched hands. Little Picasso girl, not impressed, shows them how it’s really done by using her outstretched hands to pick up a large vehicle and hurl it several football fields away (it’s a really big building), with the startled vehicle finally slamming into a wall with enough power to make it clear you shouldn’t deny these children pudding cups when they request one.

  Cut to Glowing Boy, the one who started all this mess, as he heads up some stairs and out onto the roof. He heads to one edge of the building, where spunky little Drew Barrymore holds his hand as the rest of the kids join them. They gaze into the distance, where the sun is lowering over a nondescript city. They stare for a while, because the sun doesn’t really move all that fast and you have to be patient. (I’m guessing their powers must have some type of boundary limitations, something they should probably speak to their union representative about.)

  Finally, the sun drops below the horizon, plunging us into darkness and allowing us to see that all of the children’s eyes are now glowing. (In case you don’t notice this right away, the camera zooms in on a random eyeball so we can see that, yep, we have glowing.) While the end credits roll, the camera pulls back from the radioactive Children of the Corn as they stand in a line and continue to not explain what the hell this video is all about….


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.


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