Curry Barker’s horror Milk & Serial is the latest internet sensation, and a pretty darn good film too. We take a closer look.
While doomscrolling on your phone before bedtime in the last couple of weeks, you might have come across something called Milk & Serial. The film is currently enjoying some viral fame after being released on YouTube a few weeks ago. Directed by Curry Barker, the low-budget, 62-minute horror is frighteningly authentic and guaranteed to make you panic every time your friends pull a prank on you.
Barker is one half of the team behind the YouTube channel that’s a bad idea. Together with Cooper Tomlinson, the pair post sketch videos to both YouTube and TikTok. The pair also star in Milk & Serial, and Tomlinson is a producer on the project.
The film focuses on two YouTube creators with an affinity for pranks, but when one particularly nasty jape gets out of control, trouble brews. We’ll let you discover the rest on your own. This isn’t Barker’s first foray into directing films; he’s previously directed nine shorts before Milk & Serial, which marks his first feature-length film. Barker’s 2023 short The Chair also went viral and picked up awards nominations at festivals across the US.
Made for only $800, Milk & Serial was filmed over the course of four months. Barber and Tomlinson recruited their friends to help them, and only cast one actor outside their group. They also bought a new camera, which they then sold after production wrapped, and according to Variety, made a profit on it. Together with YouTube advertising, the film quickly made a profit.
But monetary value is almost secondary to the word of mouth Milk & Serial is getting. Outlets like Variety, Bloody Disgusting and The Guardian have all run stories on the film, and it’s being widely shared on social media platforms like X/Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. Since it was released three weeks ago, it’s been watched over 400, 000 times.
After a painfully slow start, 2024 is becoming an all-time great year for horror. The First Omen, Late Night With The Devil, Strange Darling and Longlegs have all offered something new and fresh to the genre, but Milk & Serial might just be the most vicious of all of them. That shoestring budget only adds to the film’s terror.
Presented in a found footage/YouTube video format, Milk & Serial appeals to our current obsession with true crime. We’re not watching a film based on a real crime, but we are watching the crime unfold in real-time for the most part. Horror has always challenged audiences by not only putting us in the shoes of the victims or the final girl, but the killer. The opening scene of Halloween is one of the all-time great examples of seeing things from the killer’s perspective, and Chris Nash made an entire film on that premise with In A Violent Nature.
But what really tips Milk & Serial from good to great is how real it all feels. Barker and Tomlinson act as cinematographers, which makes sense as the film is constantly presented from their perspective and they often speak directly to the camera and their audience. It’s chilling stuff, especially as you start to debate whether you should keep watching or not. The reality element really challenges and partly implicates you as a viewer as more and more horrible things start to unfold.
Milk & Serial seems to also share some DNA with Rob Savage’s excellent 2020 Zoom horror Host. That movie memorably launched Savage’s career, and he’s since signed a contract with Blumhouse for three features and directed The Boogeyman for 20th Century Studios. Both Host and Milk & Serial are designed with an internet savvy audience in mind, but in the end, both films are pleasingly simple in their execution and spooks.
Barker told Variety that they did find a distributor for the film, but ended up releasing it for free on Youtube.
“Interestingly enough, after getting all the right paperwork and everything settled, we thought, ‘Man, this distribution company is probably just going to put it behind a paywall, and someone’s gonna have to pay $2.99 to watch it on Shudder or whatever it ends up being on’,” Barker told Variety. “I feel like our fans deserve to have the opportunity to watch this. They’ve seen the poster on my IMDb for a year and wondered, ‘What is this?’ So even though we worked really hard for a year trying to get distribution for this thing, we said screw it and threw it on YouTube. Before, I always felt to be respected as a real movie it has to be on Netflix or Shudder or Hulu or whatever. But people do respect it and respect that it’s for free, too.”
Bigger things are now waiting for Barker. He’s currently working on another feature-length film that’s due to shoot in October.
“It’s horror — completely horror,” the director promises. “It’s terrifying. It’s going to be insane. This movie is unlike anything I think anyone’s ever seen. It’s so different from ‘Milk & Serial’ … I’m not in it and it will not be a found footage movie. It’ll be shot more like ‘The Chair.'”
Barker is working on the film, which is titled Obsession according to Bloody Disgusting, with producer James Harris who also produced hits such as Fall and 47 Meters Down.
We’re sure this isn’t the last we’ve heard of Barker. It seems that the director has a horrifyingly bright future ahead of him.
