Milk & Serial

Milk-&-Serial
Milk & Serial

Word of mouth doesn’t tend to be of much use. In an age where users are more connected to each other through various channels, it can be effortless to distinguish an artificial push of a product from a true mass appeal of the populace. There is no longer a need for a structure to be built organically to create buzz for something, which people wouldn’t have been aware of anyway. More often than not, perception, which is a social construct, is manipulated to such an extent that people endorse and promote something that is contrary to what it actually is.

I am naturally a skeptic and I would’ve considered it strange to see ‘Milk & Serial’ extending beyond a certain threshold beyond which it could have been disregarded. Am I right to consider it a negative point? What is the second nightmare? The 62-minute-long movie was on YouTube available free of cost. For $0, users can expect to be disappointed when the price is $0 on an accessible platform. Should I simply ignore it? Cooper Tomlinson and Curry Barker were the stars of the movie but I had not heard of these two social media influencers before. I was raised in the twentieth century and it is very unusual for people of that generation to not know social media influencers, however, I’ve sat through a wide range of forgettable slasher movies featuring ‘internet stars’ to know that fake people tend to be just that and so do their adoring emoji-spamming fans whose blind love for everything they do is reminiscent of the true Hollywood A-Listers. Allow me to refresh your memory which of the three? Supposedly, ‘Milk & Serial’ cost only 800 dollars to make. I don’t understand why any indie filmmaker would care to flaunt their small budget so much. The amount also raised eyebrows. Not that it needs to be bumped up.

On the contrary, I would have assumed why a “found footage” style where you are with friends in small spaces and do not need to have a non-stop focus on action would warrant that much money.

One had to accept that the sight of no promo materials for ‘Milk & Serial’ would be blinding but considering the numerous rave reviews of the project along with the Variety headline made it clear it has to be good. I didn’t read the text but it must have been over forty times that I saw the name: ‘Milk & Serial’ That was enough justification for me to go and watch the movie.

I am far too sensible to ever indulge in melodrama like, “OMG! It is far better than anything the big studios are capable of composing!” or, “Definitely one of the best B-movies of the year and one of the best “found footage” “films in modern history” I will stick down to Earth and will rather be paying tribute to “Milk & Serial”. I happen to be one of those people who enjoy watching horror files made in one’s backyard and yes, I can’t count how many off tv screen documentaries I have seen, ‘Milk & Serial’ is just amazing despite all the odds which are rarely in favor of both formats. First, the frame was first person and it served its purpose. The second, the acting was believable. Third, the range of fabrications that the story has is such that the whole film since it is sobering and shocking can be categorized as comfortable to watch regardless of the content.

There isn’t much more to be said regarding the apparent premise which is a good thing as revealing too much would ruin some minor plot points. Milk and Seven who consider themselves best friends and share a room, run a popular YouTube channel that focuses on pranks as a genre. To celebrate Milk’s birthday, Seven calls their other friends and an arms dealer whom they met in a car park and it is all just to pull a hilarious prank where they betray one friend by making it look like he was shot at during a birthday party that Milk hosted. The joke is more or less whether it is in bad taste or in good taste but in actuality, it is only the beginning. On the one hand, it is fun and games as always once Milk learns of the truth, but strange things keep happening nonetheless which make more than one of them suspicious that it is all part of an even bigger prank on them, or something darker altogether.

Almost right away, Milk (Curry Barker) and Seven (Cooper Tomlinson) appear to be nice people. Actually, maybe not Milk. Is it possible to like him and make it this far into the story? Probably not. Still, it is really nice to witness the amiable duo when initially you brace yourself for overbearing goons from the internet wannabe scene with their garbage popularity chasing. Two nice gentlemen, who you could root for without wanting to skewer your eyes out watching them.

Barker and Tomlinson can really act as well, alongside the entire supporting cast, throughout various scenes that require them to convincingly weep, yell, be in despair, act crazily and disturbingly, become depressed to the point of wanting to harm themselves, and even get into physical violence. It would be fair to say that good quality acting is a given in terms of the overall worth of a movie since there are so many cases where better actors are avoided, like the plague, in creaking indie horror films filled with relatives and friends. Acting like this in a movie makes “Milk & Serial” already light years ahead of other films in the same genre with a laughable budget.

It might not be intentional in a conscious way, but “Milk & Serial”, contains a metafictional message too, it is scary how easily and how quickly something can go out of control in the quest for likes and subscribers. Perhaps that is also why “Milk & Serial” was so popular in the year 2024. In ten years, perhaps even in one year, a person might stumble upon this movie and ask what the noise was about as this film is rather specific to this period of time of content creation. Although it will not do any good to his film in times to come, that is just another feather in writer-director star Curry Barker’s cap as he has the ability to harness the pulse of the times to make his movie more relevant.

This is the way to go when many indie horror exploiters still use “Amityville” in their titles or when they cannot get camp right and decide to act out of ego it is good to see Barker putting in the work and being willing to go dark with an original concept here. The wheel doesn’t get reinvented. It just rolls smoothly because the people involved are realistic in their goals, and do not try to be over the top in crafting an engaging creeper. It could be interchanged with “flash in the pan,” but Barker and Tomlinson have impressive capabilities that speak of them being just scratching the surface in this genre space.

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