Entertainment

Aly & AJ’s First Video In 10 Years Is Like The Vampire DCOM You’ve Always Wanted

by Kristie Rohwedder

Sound the Cow Belles cowbell, because Aly and AJ Michalka have another gift for fans. On Thursday, the music video for Aly & AJ song “Take Me” swooped down onto YouTube like a millennial pink vampire bat. And just like the track, the video for the duo's comeback single is fantastic. Er, fang-tastic. The clip is creepy. It's gorgeous. It's gruesome. And it's the Halloween Disney Channel Original Movie you never knew you wanted.

In the video for “Take Me,” the former Disney Channel stars play a pair of vampires who host a dinner party at a chic midcentury modern house. And at this dinner party, Aly and AJ don’t feed their hypnotized guests (played by Silicon Valley’s Amanda Crew, Twin Peaks’ Madeline Zima, and La La Land’s Josh Pence). Instead, they — you guessed it — feed on their hypnotized guests. And they look fantastic throughout the whole ordeal.

In lieu of a modern vampire leather jacket or a classic Dracula cape, Aly and AJ’s vampire characters spend most of the video in puffy blouses made out of shiny, millennial pink fabric. Oh, they also hang out in a hot tub while wearing chunky knit turtleneck sweaters, proving that the Michalka vampires’ style pulls zero punches.

Speaking of things that pull zero punches, the vibe of the music video is perfection. And that’s thanks to director Alex Ross Perry and cinematographer Sean Price Williams. As MTV News points out, the '80s slasher film-esque video was shot on 16mm film, and the whole thing totally complements the song’s ’80s synth pop feel. Go ahead and sink your teeth into it.

Do you know what would take the Halloween made-for-TV movie genre to the next level? A Disney Channel Original Movie about Aly & AJ as fashionable vampires, that’s what. Sure, there’s some stuff that happens that may be, uh, a little too grisly for a DCOM, but the premise would fit right in next to classics like Halloweentown, Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire, and Don’t Look Under the Bed.

This fictional film could be about a pair of social media influencers who also happen to be vampires. They decide to throw a big influencer get-together at their picturesque home. And at this get-together, they will hypnotize and feed on all of the invitees. Alas, just as they’re about to go all vampire on their guests, they have a change of heart. Something like, “Just because we’re vampires doesn’t mean we have the right to turn on our peers.” So, they let their unwitting guests go. And then, they pull on their turtleneck sweaters and climb into the hot tub that’s in the foggy cave in their backyard.

Or it could be a spooky sequel to Cow Belles, the iconic 2006 DCOM about two pampered sisters who, in a very The Simple Life twist of fate, end up working at their father’s dairy. The hypothetical sequel could catch up with Courtney and Reed 10 years later. In this totally imaginary sequel, Courtney and Reed are relatively young vampires. They got caught up in the vampire craze of the '00s and found a serum that changed them into blood-thirsty supernatural beings (and if that’s not how they became vampires, the explanation would be something equally ridiculous). Oh, and they’re back at their father’s place of business. Who wouldn’t want to watch a DCOM about socialite vampires working at a dairy?

Fans are surely thankful for Aly & AJ's return, for the piece of pop perfection that is "Take Me," for the music video, for their forthcoming EP, and for this excuse to dream up DCOMs that will never be.