Growntown (Film)

**Growntown (Film)** is nominated for the Roses and Peaches Award

"**Growntown**" is a theatrical film that was released on June 18th, 2021 directed and written by Melanie Martinez.

## Background

Melanie began writing the script in the end of 2019 and finished it in May of 2020. The script was then cut down and sent in May 2020, with filming taking place in Greece throughout June of 2020 and ended up in the beginning of 2021. The film was edited around April and May of 2021.

The film portrays the story of Melanie's third album. It contains all eleven of the music videos, with dialogue in between each one, making it an hour and a half long.

## Plot

After Cry Baby and her friends escaped from the K-12 Sleepaway School, Lilith appears with the gate to take them to home, however Cry Baby hesitates to go with her and her friends because she feels that something was missing. Then she starts hallucinating about her past lives but she can't understand what all this means and she end up faints. When she wakes up she is in Lilith's palace in the Heaven and was being taken care of by the servants of the spirit. So Angelita appears and asks how was she and what would have happened. Cry Baby explains to her about her hallucinations and Lilith appears after to hearing this, so she decides to help Cry Baby. So Lilith to help Cry Baby, Magnolia, Fleur, Angelita, Ben and Celeste she gives them a scholarship at the Angelic College located in a mystic town (that is in heaven too) where they could hone her powers, connect with her past lives and more.

When Cry Baby and her friends arrive in Growntown they are guided by an angel named Julie who is a tour guide introduces them to the town. (*Intro*) Now the angel takes them to the Angelic College and Cry Baby and her friends come in and get introduced by the principal who is called Mrs. Barbara to the college. She tells them about the story of the college and tell them that the classes would start the next day. Then each one goes to their rooms and Angelita is Cry Baby's roommate so they both start talking about what their first day in college will be like. Then the next day the two wake up and get ready to go to class and the first day Cry Baby realizes that it will not be easy and so the same routine continues. (*Angelic Guide*) Cry Baby and her studied at the college for two years and during that time Cry Baby thinks of her family and finds in a jornal that her mother was arrested and her brother ran away from home. Seeing this she realizes starts to remember her childhood and that she was disapproved by her parents who never paid attention to her, but she decides to move on and don't care about that at last . (*Disapproved*) the film skips two years to one day before Cry Baby graduation when a new villain named Austin (who is Lilith's enemy) invades the town with his soldiers destroying everything in the town even with the guardians fighting and he ends up stealing the powers of Cry Baby and her friends and leaving them weak. (*Scorpion Venom*) They helplessly passes out as the town around her begins to crumble and break apart. Cry Baby wakes up alone in a completely devastated place while watching what happened to the town and then seeing all that she wonders if it's over and if she will meet her friends again. (*Breakdown*)

As she walks through what is left of the town, Lilith can communicate with Cry Baby using her psychic powers and tells her that the villain had invaded the palace but she and the palace maids managed to hide .Lilith explains that the fight between her and Austin has been going on for centuries and that now he was as strong as she, but when Cry Baby asks the reason for this war the connection starts to fail, so before Lilith has to stop using her psychic powers she tells Cry Baby where she needs to go to stay safe.

So she goes to the place that Lilith told her to go, and when she arrives in this hideout that lies underground, she meets some town dwellers who welcome her and she find her friends there. Then Cry Baby in one of the conversations with the mayor of the town named Eliza, she asks why there is a war between Lilith and Austin. So Eliza tells Cry Baby that Austin was a old resident of the town and did things that were forbidden and he influenced some of the boys in town and that made her banish half of the them from Growntown. Eliza also explains to Julia that Austin hates Lilith because it was the goddess who ordered her to banish him.(*Misbehaviour*)

So it's already night and everyone goes to sleep, so when Cry Baby went to sleep she starts having a dream about her past life and she found out it was a girl named Maggie who lived in the town in the past and was the old lover of Austin that when he was banished, Maggie left him but when night comes, Austin sneaks into town and goes to talk to Maggie but she was very sad and did not want to talk to him. So they get caught and Maggie was eventually killed by one of the town guardians who thought she was a traitor. And the villagers who saw the scene said that after that Austin fled the town and not returned until now. (*Love Letters*)

After this, Cry Baby tells to the others about her dream and that she discovered what could be Austin's weakness and how to defeat him. But when Cry Baby and her friends leave to go to this place where they can find the thing that can defeat the villain, Austin's soldiers find them and take them to a prison created by him to aprisonates them (because he wanted to use them hostage if in case he ever had to fight Lilith). But when Cry Baby was taken to jail she can talk to her friends and they all have a challenge to get out of there. (*Plastic Barbie*)

They manage to escape so they go to find the object that is a picture of Maggie and Austin in Maggie's house and when they find it they go after Austin who is in the town center next to Leo. (*World Tour*)

So Cry Baby starts try to talk with Austin, showing picture that she found and saying that Maggie wouldn't want him to do that. So he starts thinking about it and regrets everything he did. But Leo realizes that Austin is surrendering and when the villain is not paying attention, Leo throws him into a magic portal (which Austin would use to destroy the town) and steals his scepter. Leo says he will not surrender because he has not forgotten that Cry Baby killed his father and left him trapped at school. He also says that he only escaped from the school because Austin always observed Cry Baby he always watched her after he knew she was chosen to defeat him by Lilith, and Austin seeing him as a good ally saved him from the bubble. She also says she won't let him win and destroy the town. (*Everybody Dies*)

Cry Baby ends up being hit by the scepter and falls to the ground unconscious, so Cry Baby remembers that Lilith gave her a necklace that had magical abilities that would only work in the event of extreme emergencies. Then the necklace begins to shine and strikes a beam of light on Leo that ends up hitting his face, and he starts competing with Cry Baby, so Magnolia seeing that situation pushes Leo into the magic portal as well. But Cry Baby knows she needs to rescue Austin, so she goes after him and finds him inside but Leo appears behind her and tries to choke her, but Austin punches Leo that ends up taking him to the end of the portal and Leo disintegrates and dies. Then Cry Baby and Austin come out of the portal and he uses his scepter to wipe out the mind control he was using with his servants and leaving the town back with it was before.

So Lilith shows up because she managed to escape from the palace and finds Austin, so he asks Lilith if she could forgive him, and she says yes and accepts all the other boys back in town. (*Outro*) Cry Baby and her friends after all this, return to the palace where they live now and they all lived happily ever after.

## Trivia

* The movie was filmed at several locations of New York, United States.
	+ As an example: The Angelic College was filmed at the *City College of New York*, New York City.
* Melanie answered a fan before the release of the film that Phillipé stayed in the care of a cousin of Cry Baby who lived in her neighboring city while she was in Growntown.
	+ At the end of the movie Cry Baby goes to the house of her cousin's named Johnson to pick up her pet spider.
* Melanie when asked why the character Kelly did not return in this movie she said, "Stay tuned for my upcoming releases" which hinted that Kelly had possibly returned on her future projects.