Exo - Overdose (MV Review)

It's Certainly Intoxicating...

First of all, I'm super confused with the fact that out of everything that could be said to rag on this track and its MV, the thing I've seen most often is that it doesn't fit the genre of 'Urban Dance' ...  Nothing in Kpop conforms to any version of American genre delineations, so it's a criticism that I utterly have no understanding of. If anyone could care to explain, I'd love to hear it. The one valid point in the critique: the attitude, or lack thereof. It's not that Exo doesn't have the grit to pull off the aggressive vibe they seem to be going for in this, It's that a choice has been made for them not to maintain it for some reason. Parts of the choreography just break the image so completely that I have trouble taking the rest seriously. The part at 2:46 is especially jarring, cheek-poking aegyo just has NO place in this video and it irks me in no small measure that it was included. And the strange imagery in the beginning and end... it's more of the useless and unrelated (vaguely-Gothic) artsy stuff that SM included on SHINee's Everybody, just toned down slightly. It serves no purpose and contributes nothing to the song, other than member glamour shots (meaning that it could have done much better were it interspersed in the MV rather than segregated and pushed aside). My first thought was of the Maze Runner (which is getting a movie this Fall) and nothing in the MV as it stands can possibly amount to the depth of storytelling that thought made me hope for. The utter lack of story here is another matter entirely. Nothing happens in the MV, it's just so beyond generic that it hurts to see SM promoting it. Even dance MVs can have choreography that tells a story and SM has done it before, with Exo even: Growl & Wolf were both pretty awesome by choreography alone... This was just a string of strange movements thrown together for the sake of showing just how bizarre things can be, and to make people ogle at the physical prowess of the boys.  

Sure, all of it appeals to a certain sect of the fanbase, but it ensures that the appeal of this release is extraordinarily narrow. The appeal of Kpop is rather limited anyway, the visuals are rather overwhelming (the interesting fashion ideals, the choreography that is just so different than anything in the West, etc), so adding anything even more outside of Western understanding means that it'll be an impossible sell. I would never use Overdose's MV to introduce a friend to Kpop as a vein of musical exploration. It's just too... niche. There's also something really odd going on with all the sporadic zooming, and that one stab at camera-play at 2:13, it would be cool if there was any consistency to it. The idea of playing with the camera as a physical object came up in Growl, though to a different effect, and it could have been very cool here but they only do it that one time (and then set it right very shortly afterwards). It's just another element thrown in for the sake of having cool stuff thrown in rather than making the cool bits actually integral to the video as a whole. Also the degree to which the light-flashing overwhelmed everything else in the video was tragic. It was far worse than in Growl, where the background was at least bland enough to make keeping track of things a viable possibility. With all the crazy textures and colors of the various backdrops here, it was nearly impossible to actually focus on a single member or on the actual coordinational appeal of the movements in the choreography. It was all very distracting and not in a good way. Supposedly there's a drama version on the way and for Exo's sake I hope it's a much better MV than SM's been used to giving them.

Like all of Exo's material, the track for the Korean version of the promotional song is made to a higher quality standard than the Chinese version. Both MVs are essentially the same in their flaws, but the Chinese track is thin and hollow, particularly in the verses, where the Korean version fills out nicely. The song is catchy and a great one to have playing over and over in your headphones, but there's nothing about it that's truly remarkable. The claps and snaps begin to grate on the ears after about an hour of listening for analysis, and there's just not enough low-end. In the second half of the chorus, and on the first half of the bridge, there's a lovely fill, but the rest of it has swirls of bass synth put there specifically to try to balance out the track and it's just not enough. It makes the absence of bass on the second half of the bridge far less powerful and it makes the entire track significantly less affecting.

It's catchy and fun and I have in in my playlist.
                But over all I'm just not impressed.

I Give It A 5/10: Pretty Good.