Silly Rabbit, Pranks are for Kids…who are nutjobs
Found footage and User-Generated Content (UGC) films can often find us all on shaky ground – and that’s not just the camera work. On the one hand, the format is liberating; grab a camera, and shoot something. The punk DIY spirit can free the filmmaker to get something out of their mind and into the eyeballs of the audience – for their efforts you can get 'The Last Broadcast', 'The Blair Witch Project' or 'V/H/S'… However, this ‘have camera will film’ ethos also provides license to cut corners to throw together any old half-baked nonsense to quickly slap it onto a streaming service and to hell with craft (ahem, 'Slender')
‘From the mind of Curry Barker’, and his filmmaking partner Cooper Tomlinson (two film school dropouts who have been making a name for themselves with their independently produced shorts) comes Milk & Serial - a found footage film that belongs firmly in the former camp outlined above. It’s clever, fun, dark and shocking. Next best thing? It’s 60minutes long. Better best thing? It’s free for all, on YouTube.
The premise is simple (as is always best with found footage films) Barker (writer, director) and Tomlinson (producer) play two roommates who are trying to build their YouTube channel audience. Their basic bro hook? They continually prank each other. Recruiting the help of their friends, the two think up more and more elaborate ways to get one up on the other and win those coveted thumbs ups. Healthy friends desperately seeking healthy clicks.
We open on the run-up to a birthday party. Seven (Tomlinson) is recording his birthday wishes to his best friend Milk (Barker) with jump-cuts, retakes and mistakes left in – so far so YouTube. We move then to the set-up of Seven’s Big Birthday Prank on Milk which involves an actor, a blank-firing gun (bought off some shady dude in a parking lot) some squibs and a 'gotcha' moment. Already it’s one bad idea after another from Seven. We know immediately what type of douchebag he is.
The ‘prank’ seemingly triggers something in Milk and soon it’s revenge prank time…or is it? Could it be that best buddy Milk has a) been prepping for this moment all his life and b) has never heard of the phrase ‘take it too far’ and just seems to not so much cross the line as to pole vault over it. Clue: it’s a horror film.
From here we get an inventive little film that wrings as much as possible out of the concept, and the resources Barker has at hand (the movie was made for about $800, the majority of which was spent on the camera). What we get is a really nasty little movie that uses the slapdash editing style we’ve, sadly, come to take for granted with YouTube and TikTok reels and twists it into something cinematic and artful which makes us question what we’re seeing, who’s actually editing this film and ultimately start to step into the psyche of Milk himself.
The filmmaking is not perfect by any means – it’s rough and ready nature leads to some moments that break its own convention – there is some staging where both pranksters are on screen at the same time and you think ‘wait, who is filming this then? Why is there a big light in the desert at night?’ But these discrepancies can be brushed aside because the film curries favour (sorry Mr Barker!) with the audience through solid writing and good performances. It shows what you can get away with, formally, if you have a great script.
In Milk & Serial we get a delicious and audacious skewering of obnoxious YouTube/TikTok prank culture – taking it to its shocking, violent conclusion. Thematically, there is something terrifying and primal about pranks and prank culture (at least for this scardy-cat reviewer). Imagine living your life whereby every scenario, every moment, every single interaction with people around you is some sort of set-up or situation constructed to cause you embarrassment, fear or even pain for the amusement of your friends and loved ones? Nothing is real. Every waking moment is potentially a pledge, turn and prestige, and you’re paying for it. Always. TheNeverPress would be on edge, all the time in an untrustworthy world living through a glass darkly. Hard pass.
Milk & Serial taps into that fear – the friendship between the central characters is rotten, dysfunctional and sadly co-dependent. They live together, they create together and they fuck each other over at every single opportunity under the guise of ‘got you’. They are bros. The delicious twist here, and again plucking on another primal string, is in that moment when you’re play-fighting and you take it a little too far, and your friend or sibling retaliates with such an out-of-proportion response that the ground shifts and you realise you’ve unwittingly unlocked something really not so chill.
Milk & Serial is far from perfect, but the small stumbles in technique and form are brushed aside by the chutzpah from Barker as he throws themselves into the film (in front and behind the camera) – he is a very talented and promising filmmaker and the glee in which he goes about his business is infectious and energising.
That the film is released on YouTube for free is laudable, and the fact that the title card proudly and ominously states that it comes ‘from the mind of Curry Barker’ is pretty badass. Milk & Serial proves that if you have the idea, the love of the craft, a good script and some solid acting then just get a camera and you’re home free. You go get ‘em kiddo.
Watch 'Milk & Serial' for free!
Useful Links!
The Chair - dir, C. Barker, 2023
Heavy Eyes - dir, C. Barker, 2022
This review was fully independent. Other views are available on other sites. x