I have never once participated in the insanity of Black Friday. I’m just too scared — and if Nacho Punch’s Black Friday fake movie trailer is anything to go by, I’ve been wise to stay away. Re-imagined as a horror movie, it makes one of the biggest shopping days of the year look like a cross between The Purge and George Romero’s zombie flicks. Who else thinks staying in and watching a holiday movie while recovering from your turkey coma sounds like a much better use of your time? I do, I do!
You’ll probably remember Nacho Punch from their hilarious take on Daylight Saving Time, a fake sci-fi/thriller/disaster movie called Saving Daylight. Black Friday runs in the same vein, satirizing a cultural phenomenon by turning it into a Hollywood blockbuster; I would argue, though, that Black Friday is actually less funny than Saving Daylight. Not that it’s bad — on the contrary, it’s pretty incredible — but I think it hits on something a little darker than the difficulties of turning the clock back. After all, the moment those store doors open, these people:
Really do turn into these people:
And that’s horrifying. I don’t know about you, but I feel exactly the way this guy does:
Hands down, the creepiest moment is at the 2:14 mark. I don’t want to spoil it for you, so scroll down to watch the whole video. I’m not kidding when I say that what happens at that moment made my stomach drop the way it does when you’re riding a rollercoaster. I’ll freely admit, however, that this moment definitely made me snort into my coffee:
Has there ever been a better representation of Black Friday than a flaming shopping cart speeding past the destruction wrought by a 50 percent off sale? No. No, there has not.
In all seriousness, though, I do think Black Friday has gotten more than a little out of hand in recent years. Between stores opening earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving itself (which, to me, sends the message that consumerism is more important than spending time with your friends and loved ones) and the absolutely bonkers amount of carnage that happens during the shopping extravaganza…well, does anyone really need a new television that badly? The data analysis experts at Silk just posted some visualizations of Black Friday’s worst disasters, and the graphs are sobering, to say the least. The stats they used, drawn from the Black Friday Death Count, are very real — but no sale should be worth 46 people getting pepper sprayed over. Ever. So let’s all just keep that in mind as we plan our Black Friday strategies this year, shall we?
Watch the full video below:
Images: Nacho Punch/YouTube (4)
