Milk & Serial

A lot of found footage horror movies over the years would have been a lot better served had they leaned into a shorter runtime. 90 minutes of footage is a seriously long time to justify someone keeping a camera running for. If 'Milk & Serial' had tried to push for an extra half an hour it could have undone all the great work this little gem of a film had created. This was a good one.

This was everything I like in a good found footage film. It's dark and constantly twisting and we know it is all building up to a treacherous ending. As far as this sub-genre goes, the acting is pretty good as well.

For a film available free on YouTube this was a great little treat. 9/10.

A couple years back that kid from stranger things released a found footage horror movie called Spree. It's about a murderous, incel, wannabe influencer that goes on a killing spree. It was so bad that I made people watch it, not because it was funny-bad, but because I needed to share my anger with others---- this is like if that movie was good.

In general, I find found-footage to be boring and unimaginative. I gave this a shot, because I think Curry Barker & Cooper Tomlinson are funny in sort of a GreatValue™ I Think You Should Leave way. I was ready for this to be bad. Almost expecting it - but I was pleasantly surprised. It's fairly straightforward - Maybe a little bit derivative or predictable at times, but Barkers performance is what sells it. I was not prepared for him to be 1) good at acting 2) actually horrifying. Worth the watch. An impressive directorial debut.

Curry Barker who plays Milk, has delivered a very unique piece of entertainment surrounding a cunning serial killer. Milk & his best friend Seven have a YouTube channel called 'prank bros' and they have some pretty serious pranks that's they play on each other. The film begins with the making of a prank, Seven is clearly the more serious one of the two of them, and plans to play a rather cruel prank on Milk, on his birthday of all days. The prank all goes slightly sinister when what appears to be a neighbour shows up at the door complaining about the noise and acting very sketchy. The film sounds simple but ends up full of twists and turns, with a bit of welcomed unpredictability. For a short movie, filmed on purpose in a kind of amateur way deliberately, it was really good. Definitely worth watching as it trumps the amount of entertaining you get from most films in a shorter amount of time. Also the acting from Milk was remarkable, I will now be checking out his other short movies and hope to see more of Curry Barkers name in the future.

Attempting a big social media prank, a group of friends try to continually get one over on each other as the experience draws them into the long-hidden psychopathic intuitions of one of the group's depressed past that sets them off into a race against time to stop their unhinged plans from coming true.

Overall, this was a solid enough indie genre effort. One of the finer aspects with this one is the engrossing and likable setup that features quite a lot of likable elements to it. The initial setup with the friend-group who are going around setting up the exploits of their channel and relationship with each other by setting up elaborate and harmful pranks on each other for a birthday surprise gets this established quite nicely so that the later exploits are far more believable. Not knowing whether or not the series of crazed incidents, from encountering the stranger in the apartment to the suicide attempts by the figure they come across, and the bizarre kidnapping scheme that quickly goes array, there's a genuinely thrilling and immersive experience that all builds up a fantastic showcase for the eventual devolution into insanity that comes about as how he treats his friends over time helps this out immensely. Beyond this, though, there's not much to this one that stands out. The type of setup featured here generating vicious and somewhat illegal pranks on people for the sake of views on their video channel makes the group so unlikable it's hard to get invested in what's going on with the friends barely being worth investing this much time into. As this is due to the prank-video nature of the channel so no one can be believed or trusted, that just adds even more to what's going on here There's also the fact that there's so many obvious instances in which psychotic behavior becomes quite underwhelming to see play out as too many obvious red flags are ignored for the sake of moving a story along that's quite cliche and familiar. As well as a lackluster finale that makes for so many rule-breaking moments of found-footage throughout here, these all manage to bring this one down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

I was unfamiliar with Curry Barker and his YouTube channel where he and his team have made several short movies in the past, however Milk & Serial had quite a lot of people talking and therefore I needed to check it out.

The movie is made with a a budget of $800, which is astonishing because they managed to make a pretty good movie, which was seriously entertaining and quite enjoyable overall. The acting was really convincing which surprised me because low budget productions often suffer from really bad acting, however Curry Barker, Cooper Tomlinson and the rest of the cast all do a commendable job. The movie offers quite some twists and therefore definitely is able to keep the audience's attention which also shouldn't be that big of a task with about an hour of runtime, however there were multiple moments where I was thrown off guard for a second because the story switched up. There are movies out there with similar themes so it's not completely original but nonetheless it managed to be quite unique with its narrative. Obviously there are no massive special effects or gruesome gore, but that kept the whole atmosphere really realistic, which is another element that worked really well. The found footage aspect, the believable acting and the realistic narrative really gave this movie a scarily realistic feeling. Obviously this movie was far from perfect and there are flaws as well, however I think they can be mostly overlooked and I would definitely like to see more from these young filmmakers. This was by far better than many of the latest Hollywood projects, especially when it comes to horror. However you have to keep in mind that this really low budget is the crucial argument for this movie's success and love. If you take away this aspect the movie is still a well done Horror-Thriller but nothing groundbreaking and while it grabs your attention in the moment, it lacks the depth to remain memorable. [5,6/10]