Justin Long.
Photo: Ariana Grande via YouTube
Ariana Grande does not have the public Letterboxd presence of her “Sympathy is a knife” co-star, Charli XCX, but, if she did, I’d bet Barbarian or Tusk would be highly rated. The music video for Grande’s new single “Hate That I Made You Love Me” debuted today, and it’s a short horror film starring Justin Long. In the video, directed by Christian Breslauer, Long begins by burying his ex-girlfriend, played by Grande, in an underground basement and leaving her for dead. As he drives along the highway, she appears in his backseat. Suddenly, she’s in front of him on the road, causing him to swerve and crash into a tree. As he tries to get rid of everything that reminds him of her, she keeps reappearing, watching him as he sets their house on fire and scaring him out of a diner. Finally, he goes and digs her up and ends up in the basement himself.
Though the video isn’t directly referencing a movie, the casting of Long feels intentional — in Tusk and Barbarian, he plays a cocky asshole the audience enjoys watching go through the horror-movie wringer. Grande’s often referenced film in her work. In the “Thank U Next” video, she recreated four 2000s school rom-coms, and she titled her previous album Eternal Sunshine, after the Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. What other references could she work into her album Petal, out July 31? I’m rooting for her to bring in one of her favorite movies: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.
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