Web Video / Kiss Me (Kill Me)

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"Kiss Me (Kill Me)" is a music video and remix by English YouTuber and musician JerryTerry, released on October 31, 2021. The featured song is a cover/remix of "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, with a remade instrumental and new lyrics performed by JuKayVid. The video/remix serves as an indirect sequel to JerryTerry's 2017 video "The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)", a parody of "The Boys Are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy.

The Framing Device follows an unseen protagonist breaking into the classified records database of the Ulsbridge Police Department, in which they find a file documenting an unsolved missing persons case from 1998. Attached is an audio file and accompanying analysis (along with the song itself), which documents the last moments of a woman traveling to the forest with an unknown companion for what initially sounds like a romantic rendezvous, but slowly becomes something far, far worse.

Not to be confused with the similarly-titled manhwa, Kill Me, Kiss Me.

This remix and music video provides examples of:

• Alluring Flowers: Among the more surreal descriptions the singer gives as she ventures further into the forest is smelling something "sickly sweet". An annotation indicates that upon arriving at the scene, first responders reported an unrecognizable sweet smell during the first hour of investigation.
• Ambiguously Evil: It's not clear whether The Gourd is a malicious entity or not. The whole video appears to be started from the video's POV protagonist attempting to find information on GourdChat (the messaging system seen in "The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)"), but then GourdCop appears — actively recognizing that they're trying to steal classified documents — and then ominously assisting them by showing them a different case file as they download another one. For what purpose isn't clear, but he briefly takes over the computer to exit a chat when a user named "thinliz_76" attempts to warn them to stop their investigation (to which GourdCop "laughs" before leaving with an ominous squint towards the user), and when the files are successfully downloaded, it delivers a warning that they can spread the word around all they want, but no one will believe them.
• Apocalyptic Log: The song is delivered in the Framing Device as part of a tape recording recovered from the Willsbury Forest, where — following anonymous reports of gunshots — it was discovered the area had become heavily damaged and full of uprooted trees. The contents of the tape recording only raise more questions than answers.
• Bait-and-Switch: The remix is meant to sound virtually identical to the original "Kiss Me" at the beginning, and the initial verse features the untouched lyrics from the original song (albeit taking from the second verse of the original). It's not until the first chorus do the lyrics steadily change, and the more the music video plays its hand in revealing that not only is this not a simple edit like "The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)," it's also nowhere near as lighthearted.
• Body Horror: We thankfully aren't subject to it visually, but the few vague descriptions of what happens to the singer as she's overtaken by parasitic forces are not pretty, with her describing feeling eggs in her veins and desiring to share the same feeling with everyone else, which apparently involves hardening bones and sloughing skin.
• Call-Back:
  • A few passages in the remix interpolate the melody from "The Boys are Back in Town," referring to the remix's predecessor, "The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)."
  • Partway in the transcript, the POV protagonist receives a chat message from a user named "thinliz_76," urgently warning them to stop what they're doing and run, up until The Gourd shuts them up. "thinliz_76" is the same person who was sending messages to the (presumably different) POV of "The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)."
• Classified Information: The Framing Device of the remix is that it's part of a classified case file from a cold police investigation. Based on the way the video starts, with the unseen person manning the computer repeatedly failing to log into the UPD database terminal, they are most certainly an intruder digging through files illegally. The interface itself puts up a reminder of the confidentiality of the files and that sharing any of them is strictly prohibited... at least until the very end, where it changes to a much more ominous reminder:
  REMEMBER:
  It's perfectly fine to steal CONFIDENTIAL files.
  Take them. Spread them around. Do WHATEVER you want.
  No one will believe you anyway.
• The Cover Changes the Meaning:
  • The first verse of the remix is identical to the second verse of the original song by Sixpence None the Richer (listed above as the page quote), before the lyrics gradually diverge and transform into an entirely different story. Whereas the original is a Silly Love Song full of innocent, romantic ventures between the singer and her partner, the narrative of this song — once marked by the line "we'll take the trail marked on your father's map" — becomes a horror story in which the singer is lured somewhere into the woods, discovering — and soon, becoming — something nightmarish.
  • More specifically, the repeating "kiss me" motif throughout the original song becomes steadily recontextualized from a sincere, innocent show of affection to a quiet plea for comfort amidst increasingly frightening events, to a nightmarish lure from a deliriously ravenous monster, until finally, in her seemingly last moment of lucidity, she switches to requesting "kill me" before it's too late.
• Darker and Edgier: The remix transforms the sugary-sweet 90's love song into a frightening Apocalyptic Log by an innocent woman becoming possessed by a nightmarish parasite. It's also substantially darker than JerryTerry's preceding Horror Comedy remix, "The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)," with the song having little to no comedic beats to it to offset the dark premise.
• Don't Go in the Woods: It's established in the lyrics and the case file that the singer went into the Willsbury Forest with an unknown partner at night, following a trail marked on "[their] father's map," only for something horrible to happen to her that caused immense damage to the surroundings, leaving their fate inconclusive, but it definitely wasn't good. Annotations on the police report make note of suspicious descriptions in their venture that have increasingly little to do with the forest, from "faded warnings" (either trail signage or something else), a "crumbling wall" (which an investigator suggests to be of a shelter, but it's far too west to be consistent), and a "barricade" (which definitely wasn't in the forest), leading the consultants to wonder just where the hell are they?
• Digital Abomination: The Gourd programs, like "GourdChat" and GourdCop seem to be this. They seemingly act as middlemen for other supernatural entities, given "GourdChat" seemed to just be a communication program in "The Boys Are Back in Town (to kill you)" and GourdCop leads the protagonist to a casefile of a Transformation Horror incident.
• Driven to Madness: The singer is presumably overtaken by some monstrous, parasitic force, which leads her to suddenly feeling an intense, violent euphoria in which she begs someone to join her in her newly-infested state. She only gets a brief reprieve of lucidity before plunging further into her corrupted state, where all she requests is to be put out of her misery.
• Evil Is Visceral: The parasite that takes hold of the singer is heavily associated with rotting, pulsating flesh, to the point where just an audio recording of it causes the computer monitor to slowly warp into something resembling a trembling, bloodshot eye.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Throughout the video, there are little tidbits that pop up in the UPD database's UI, including interesting descriptions and annotations by later consultants overseeing the case. Some of them hint at further developments and assessments of the bizarre case at hand, others read as not-so-subtle threats towards the viewer for their snooping.
• Foreshadowing: Before the remix outwardly plays its hand at revealing what kind of story it actually is, the first chorus subtly fudges the lyrics from the original song — the original lyrics feature the line "Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance, silver moon's sparkling," but the remix changes it to "Strike up the band and make the blowflies dance, silver moon's darkening". In addition to the moon being changed from being bright to not, blowflies are commonly associated with eating rotting meat, imagery that becomes much more common later in the song.
• Genuine Human Hide: The singer realizes that her partner's "father's map" that they followed feels disconcertingly like human skin.
• Ghostly Chill: The air suddenly becoming cold is the first big sign to the singer that something is horribly, horribly wrong.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: The singer, after being infected with some kind of mind-altering, mutagenic parasite, eventually starts pleading with her unknown companion to kill her, implicitly after already being subdued ("I won't stay down much longer") so that she can't attack or infect anyone else. At the end, a figure in a hazmat suit arrives and finishes her off instead. The Last Note Nightmare at the end implies that it didn't work.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The singer is seemingly taken out by a gunshot following her breaking from her plea for a Mercy Kill, and quickly lapsing back into her monstrous state:
  oOOh kiss me
  You'll never— (BANG)
• Leitmotif: The melody of "The Boys are Back in Town" plays whenever The Gourd shows up and is relevant.
• Luring in Prey: Once the singer is overtaken by the transformation, her dialogue (including the refrains of "Kiss me") turn delirious, begging her unseen partner to join her in her horrifically corrupted state.
  Kiss me
  You can't escape forever
  Kiss me
  I know you'll like the change
  The eggs will fill your veins, let me explain
  A second's pain gives way to pleasures only dreamed of
  So kiss me—e—e—e—e...
• Lyric Swap: The remix initially sounds almost identical to the original Sixpence None the Richer song, but starting from the first chorus, they diverge significantly from a Silly Love Song into a frightening Body Horror story.
• Meat Moss: Among the singer's descriptions of the forest is that "every way I turn there's rotting meat":
  Help me
  Beside the boiling tendrils
  Help me
  Why do the trees have veins?
• Mercy Kill: The singer has a brief moment of lucidity thought before completely succumbing to her corruption, in which she quietly begs for her partner to kill her in order to stop her transformation and from infecting others. Soon after she returns to her monstrous mind state, her screaming stops immediately once a handgun goes off, implying that someone fulfilled her request... possibly.
• Mysterious Watcher: "The Gourd" is a mysterious entity that the unseen POV user of the video is attempting to investigate — the very first things they do after getting access to the UPD's database is to search up information regarding "GourdChat" of a different case. Suddenly, a Clippy-like virtual assistant named GourdCop (a cartoony pumpkin man in police getup) appears and begins to "assist" the user by taking control of the interface and showing them a different case file, along with making vague, creepy threats about their pursuits.
• Mythology Gag: The date of the initial crime scene investigation is listed on the case file as August 12, 1998, the same date that the original "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer was released as a single.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The remix and the song leave a lot to the imagination. Many details highlighted in the lyrics and assessed in the police report — the site filled with inexplicably uprooted trees and heavy structural damage, a recovered "flowered hat" covered in an unknown black substance, described sights of "bubbling crow skulls" and "black wet chains," the identity of "your father," etc. — go completely unexplained. Most crucially, it's not even explicitly stated what the hell happened to the singer and why, only that it was the stuff of nightmares.
• Oh, Crap!: It's not until the third verse where the singer starts to realize her horrific surroundings (seemingly snapped out of a trance in the process), before she delivers a startled question to her unseen partner:
  (Kiss me) Wait, wait (wait, wait)
  What was your father's name?
  Why does his map feel just like human skin?
• Parasitic Horror: Whatever happens to the singer is strongly implied to be the result of some otherworldly parasite infesting her body, at least based on the description she gives of what's happening to her.
  Are there bugs on me? (Wait, wait)
  I feel the oozing, creeping, throbbing eggs
  all shifting inside me
  so help me...
• Pumpkin Person: "The Gourd" is a recurring entity in the Framing Device, represented by a cute cartoon pumpkin man, but is implied to be something far more than that.
• Scenery Gorn: The singer describes the Willsbury Forest (at least, what's supposed to be the Willsbury Forest) with increasingly dissonant and nightmarish descriptions, which she initially doesn't react to or seem to properly process until it's too late. The police report annotations suggest that she might have been hallucinating due to delirium or psychoactive substances, but the later annotations believe that something much more out-of-the-ordinary may have happened.
  Kiss me (Kiss me)
  Beside the melting tree stumps
  Kiss me (Kiss me)
  Down on the dead, grey grass
  Sniff, sniff (Sniff, sniff)
  It smells so sickly sweet
  But every way I turn there's rotting meat (Oh~!)
• Skewed Priorities: In response to the line "Beside the melting tree stumps", one of the annotations from the investigators says "Lumber yard 2 miles west - check for cutting zones", to which another responds with "And we're just ignoring the 'melting' part??"
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The police report initially reads as perfectly impartial towards the audio log documenting the missing woman's final moments, but as her descriptions become more surreal yet vivid, it becomes more inclined to bury anything she says as yielding "little useful information" and as "strictly a symptom of delusion," outright saying "Do not attempt to analyze." Later annotations made by outside consultants beg to differ, one of them positing that if it truly didn't have any useful information, the department wouldn't have brought them in.
• Transformation Horror: It's strongly implied that the singer ends up overcome by some sort of horrific eldritch parasite that causes things to crawl around inside of her, abruptly causing her to become euphoric and desiring to spread whatever's inside of her.
  Kiss me (kiss me)
  I'm feeling so much better
  Kiss me—e—e (kiss me)
  And I can make you strong
  Hide hide (Hide hide)
  I'll find you soon enough
  Your bones will harden and your skin will slough
• Uncertain Doom:
  • Everyone's fate is inconclusive — the singer was presumably Mercy Killed via gunshot, but despite police investigation, there's no report of anyone finding a corpse or any leads of her or her companion, leaving the case stone cold dead. Even more worrying, once the unseen investigator leaves their computer, a red light appears from outside, along with echoes of "kiss me..."
  • In a more mild case, thinliz_76's fate is unclear. In "The Boys Are Back in Town (To Kill You)", they're seemingly killed by the Boys for telling them that the viewer can't be found. However, in "Kiss Me (Kill Me)", they briefly send messages pleading with the investigators to stop looking into the case, only for Gourd to cut them off. Not helped by the fact that it's kind of difficult to tell where in the timeline the two songs take place.
• Villain's Dying Grace: Implied — as the singer pleads with her companion to kill her to keep her Body Horror infection from spreading to others, her last words before losing herself entirely and being shot dead are "I've opened up the path, you'll wake up from this scary dream and laugh," suggesting that her last act before being killed was opening up a method for her friend to escape after killing her. Unfortunately, The Stinger implies that she survived her Mercy Kill and is still out there.