Red Velvet’s ‘Russian Roulette’ Video Makes Murder Look Positively Adorable
K-Pop girl groups — some sexy dancing and suggestive lyricism aside — maintain a relatively squeaky-clean reputation. As a result, it's quite something to see a troupe knowingly subvert the genre and go for something more...sinister.
Following the release of their The Velvet EP in March, Red Velvet return today (September 7) with the release of their third mini-album, Russian Roulette — and it all kicks off with the title track from the EP.
The perky, retro-sounding electro-pop tune is more or less the standard fare to expect from today's crop of Korean pop idols, which makes the accompanying video all the more shocking. The plot? Murder.
As the girls sing their upbeat tune, each of them conspires to maim the unsuspecting other in various gruesome ways: putting rainbow-colored nuts and bolts in their breakfast cereal, pushing a piano down the stairs — even wheeling a bed directly into traffic. And while the video never actually goes there, the violence is very much implied in between all the cutesy dancing and deadpan stares. It's all total black comedy, sort of like Jawbreaker — and it's pretty genius.
You know how the saying goes: keep your friends close, and — uh. Actually, just stay away from them.