Director: Joseph Kahn
Treatmeant by: Joseph Kahn
Grey clouds smash into each other. Rolling blue flashes of light spin under the surface, exploding into fingers of lightening. A swarm of rain flickers against the night. Leaves whip by. Over this, the title of the video fades in like the opening of the movie.
Backstreet Boys "Everybody"
A Hillside in Europe.
The coughing of a bad engine. The whirring down of it's fan. A Tourbus pulls over the side of the road, pelted by the rain. They are out in the middle of nowhere, scored by the wind's howl and swaying of trees.
Inside the bus, all the Backstreet Boys groan. Just what they needed. This is NOT cool. Kevin runs outside and kicks the wheel of the bus. Everyone joins him outside figuring out what to do. AJ tires to make a call on his cellphone but it's dead.
A car whips by, not bothering to stop.
Brian cracks a nervous joke. Howie spots something in the distance.
High up in a hill, trees sway, leaves scatter, a strong wind shatters the silence. The wind sounds like a lil girl's scream. An incredible mansion looms in the distance ... a fortrees of stone squatting on it's own shadow. Black ravens perch on a long strip of broken fences, overgrown with wiry vines. It is a monsterous foreboding castle.
AJ does not want to go up there. It's creepy. But Nick is exited. He thinks the mansion looks awesome, not to mention he's holding a copy of Dracula in his hand. He riles everybody up into an adventure and starts up the hill. Kevin makes a decision and gets everyone else to go too.
A row of old tombstones line the bottom of the mansion. Black crows perch. The Boys step up to the entrance of this dark mansion, a set of giant gothic wooden doors with the shape of a hollow face planted as an ornery above the doorknob. Nick knocks on it and we hear an echo.
In the corner of our eye, we think we can see a shape of a person looking at us from a window. It's gone. Nothing there. We barely notice that the face on the doorknob has changed from a smile toa frown. Lightening flickers in the wet air.
No answer. Nick swings open the door with a creeeeeeekkk and they have now stepped into -
The Castle
... a grand lobby, empty. A Stone staircase loops down following shafts of blue light. Cobwebs drape from a giant chandelier. A scattering of candles dimly flicker, melted wax dripping. The Furniture is antique and expensive. Gold trimming adorns everything as delicately as a Faberge egg. It is plushand luxorious.
On the walls we see 19th century paintings of what are presumably the owners of this place. Oddly, they all look like the Backstreet Boys, all rendered in authentic old style delicateness. They wear old clothing, cool old suits that look like what Millionaires wore in the late 19th century. In the paintings, we see one of the eyes move. A hole has been cut ... someone is watching us.
The Boys climb the stairs and each find their own room.
The mansion rattles. A wolf howls in the distance. They all begin to ...
Dream
The song starts.
Brian gets out of his bed, his head throbing. He tries to drink a glass of water, but he drops it on the floor shattering it. He screams, runs to the shutters and opens the window revealing.
The moon.
Hair starts threading out of his hand and arms. He ripps of his shirt.
Framed against the moon, he's turned into the wolfman.
Brian runs throught the Hallways, snarling, singing. He jumps from one end of the staircase to another - leaping an incredible distance. He hangs from the rafters and performs in superhuman positions.
Meanwhile, we see lanterns passing down dark hallways, a bookcase swinging into a secret room. There are Dungeons with skulls on the ground. A piano that plays by itself, small spiders scattering across the ceiling.
A gold sarcophagus splits open.
A mummy steps out, slowly, deliberate. We pan up to it's head and blond hair is on the top.
The mummy pulls the cloth from it's face revealing Nick!
He strolls down the hallways, jerky, freaky.
Suddenly Brian the wolfman joins him and they end up in an choreographed dance number incorporating the characters of the monsters they portray.
Elsewhere, a secret chamber holds an old pipe organ. Camera races towards a man sitting at the chair, playing. He turns his face, half of it covered by a silver mask. The other half is AJ! The phantom of the Opera.
As he plays, smoke rises from the pipes and we see the Visage of ghosts appear. Spinning, moving in the air, beautiful woman in gothic dresses.
A table is adorned with a giant feast, all laid out on a fine silverware. A rat scuttles through. A ballroom where a small party of guests dances ... they spin about but we notice that they are transparent. A dance of Ghosts.
Meanwhile, we finally see the butler and maid staff of the castle. The butler is old. The maids are hot. They stand around a coffin.
The coffin opens.
Howie steps out as Dracula. He flings open his cape and turns into a bat.
Suddenly the camera is taking the perspective of the bat, and we fly out of the window, over the landscape.
We see the hill of the castle drop off. The Tourbus below, stalled. We are flying past the night sky and stars, to a small village, the light flickering in the distance.
Howie suddenly steps though to the balcony of a woman's bedroom. In a trance she steps out of bed and goes to him. Howie takes her in his arms, and instead of biting her neck, they start to float in the sky. They spin and dance against the moon.
A crowd of villagers assembles beneath them, watching this awesome display. They start yelling at Howie with pitchforks and torches. They become a lunatic crowd.
Amidst the crowd, a gentleman steps through and walks down an alleyway casting long shadows on the Cobblestone Street. A horse and buggy passes him.
We notice that his shadow starts off normal, but it starts changing into a hunched position. When the men steps up to the light, he is Mr. Hyde. He is Kevin, and he is Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde.
Policemen are chasing him. Kevin runs down the street and crashes through windows, avoiding them.
We dissolve back to the mansion. In the back of hidden rooms, we see strange devices. Kevin pulls a flask of glowing green serum and drinks it. He is normal and handsome but something's sinister about him.
He looks outside his window and sees ...
The Angry Townspeople
They come in a mob, holding pitchforks and torches.
They climb the hill and starts slamming up against the door.
As the song builds, they become more and more frenzied.
Suddenly druing the break in this song, they give one last push. As the song explodes again, they crash the gate and step into the mansion.
A huge Danceparty Erupts
All the Townspeople join the Backstreet Boys, throwing their hands in the air doing a giant choreographed dance sequence. It is all costumed and entertaining with the Townspeople using their pitchforks and tools as a part of the number. It's an homage to old 1980's videos, done in a modern sleek way.We finish the video with this sequence, building, building and building.
We flow through these images, building a hypnotic, exotic world. The Backstreet Boys become ringmasters in an extravagant gothic show, the ultimate haunted house. It is a dark party.
The Conclusion
As the Video nears the end, we come into a hallway that stretches back. Suddenly, an orange glow erupts from the back. A ball of fire shoots across the Hallway, demolishing everything in sight.
And then in an blink of an eye, everything goes back to normal ... untouched as if the fire was never there.
Nick wakes up from an nightmare. All of the Boys get out of their rooms, reassuring themselves it was just a dream. Suddenly everyone notice Brian isn't there.
We pull back out of the castle, and we see stars drifting across the night. Against the moon. Brian the wolfman howls.
Fade out.

Home