Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Curry Barker
Starring: Curry Barker, Cooper Tomlinson, Adlih Alvarado,
Jonnathon Cripple, Andy Dubitsky, Gloria Karel
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences distinguishes shorts from
feature films by the 40 minute mark: anything shorter than 40 minutes is
considered a short, anything longer a feature. But when the general public
thinks of a feature film we generally accept no less than 80 minutes. This
comes from our desire to get bang for our box office buck. Back in the era
of double features, the second-billed movie could be less than an hour in
length because the audience knew they had a second movie still to come. In
the age of streaming services, running times shouldn't matter as audiences
pay a monthly fee rather than forking out for an individual movie. And yet
movies made by streaming services are often notoriously flabby, adopting the
mentality that a movie can be as long as it takes. But why not as short as
it takes? Why can't a streaming movie be an hour long? Why does streaming
still adhere to standards aimed at pleasing cinemagoers?
The likes of Netflix and Amazon are obsessed with competing with cinemas
for the public's eyeballs, but their real competition is YouTube, where
viewers can get the sort of quick fixes that aren't available on commercial
streaming platforms. I often find myself looking for something to watch late
at night and end up watching some 1930s public domain horror on YouTube,
largely because it's 65 minutes long and I don't want to commit to a 90
minute movie at that time of night.
Writer/director Curry Barker never could have gotten his feature
debut Milk & Serial onto a commercial streaming platform,
and certainly not into cinemas, as it's a mere 62 minutes long. So Barker
decided to release it for free on his own YouTube channel, where at time of
writing he has over 600,000 subscribers. It's a decision that has paid off
in spades, with the film racking up over half a million views in the two
weeks since it dropped. With a budget of a mere $800, YouTube ad revenue
should enable it to turn a more than healthy profit, and the attention
Barker is receiving means he will likely get to work with a proper budget
sometime soon.
Barker makes his meagre budget work by adopting the found footage format.
His central characters, Milk (played by Barker himself) and Seven (Cooper Tomlinson), are a pair of low level YouTube pranksters seeking a way of going viral.
Seven comes up with the idea of staging an elaborate prank during Milk's
birthday party. Their friend Naomi (Adlih Alvarado) is to be rigged
up with a squib and "shot" by a stranger who enters their apartment and
pulls a gun loaded with blanks. The prank appears to go to plan, but then
things take an unexpected turn...
As is often the case with found footage movies, you have to remove your
pedant's cap if you're to enjoy Milk & Serial. The non-linear structure of the film implies the footage has been edited
together, but we're never given an explanation of who would be responsible
for such an endeavour. There are moments where the camera angles are a
little too staged to make sense in such immediacy. But hey, it's a quarter
of a century since The Blair Witch Project, so if you're still quibbling about such details at this point the found
footage format probably just isn't for you.
Making the protagonists a pair of clout-chasing YouTubers removes the
question of "why are they still filming?", as it makes perfect sense that
milk and Seven would want to capture as much potential "content" as they
can. The cameras are often hidden, and Barker wisely eschews perfect framing
in favour of a more realistic look with heads cut off and faces obscured,
even allowing the lens to lose focus at points. There are comic moments
where characters discover that they're being filmed despite Milk and Seven's
best attempts to obscure their snooping.
Barker and Tomlinson have collaborated on multiple horror shorts and comic
skits on their YouTube channel, and they have a well-honed chemistry that
makes us believe we're really watching a pair of friends interacting here. I
felt like I was watching Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in
Good Will Hunting, so natural is the pair's rapport. The supporting players are equally
impressive considering their largely amateur status, with nobody sticking
out as untrained.
But what's best about Milk & Serial is its unsettling
atmosphere, which is largely achieved by how Barker evokes real life
horrors. It's impossible to watch Seven plan his blank bullets prank without
thinking of the tragic death of Rust cinematographer Halyna
Hutchins. A character delivers sociopathic monologues to a camera mounted on
their car dashboard, immediately recalling the series of misogynistic
diatribes delivered by "incel" killer Elliott Rodger. When an offscreen cop
approaches a car, the in-car camera triggers our awareness of the many
shootings by police that have been captured from this very vantage
point.
For most of its run time Milk & Serial forces us to
endure the POV of its antagonist, but despite the horrors we witness them
committing, Barker gets inside our heads and makes us unwitting
participants. When a crime is to be covered up, we almost feel as though
we're accomplices, and we find ourselves tensing up when it seems the
villain is about to be rumbled. Barker keeps us on our toes with a series of
twists and turns, and by switching perspective to occasionally remind us
we've been rooting for the wrong person.
Ironically however, while its brief run time is probably
Milk & Serial's greatest asset in attracting viewers, it does end in a rather abrupt
manner, deflating the tension at the point where it was really beginning to
ramp up. Perhaps Barker was worried that he couldn't hold our attention for
longer than an hour, a mentality he will have to shake off if he wants to
make the switch from the quick fix world of YouTube to the realm of
mainstream filmmaking.
You can watch
Milk & Serial below.
