Horror is one of the most experimental genres out there, being used since its inception to push boundaries and terrify viewers in ways they never could have expected. It’s been an essential medium for some of today’s most important stories, and while movies and TV shows usually get the most acclaim, there’s an online platform that is quickly becoming the best place to find horror’s biggest stars: YouTube. Filled with petrifying shorts and beautifully produced long-form projects, this video-sharing website allows creators to distribute their projects free from the restrictions of big studios, with the best proof of the hub for dreadful excellence this platform has become being Milk & Serial. Directed and starring Curry Barker with his team at the YouTube channel, that’s a bad idea, the film is a masterclass in found footage, creating a twisted story of pranks gone wrong and introducing fans to one of this era’s most chilling villains.
It’s a clear representation of not only modern horror’s best aspects but of how the greatest filmmakers don’t need wild effects or big budgets to make something amazing.Milk & Serial succeeds in a way few other found footage films ever have, and beyond that, it shows that a movie doesn’t need a massive cash flow to create one of the scariest things viewers have ever seen.
Milk & Serial begins the way that so many of the worst YouTube videos do: with a prank. It follows Seven (Cooper Tomlinson) and Milk (Barker), a pair of 20-something YouTubers who prank each other on their channel Prank Bros, a clear riff on the many toxic “prankster” channels that fill the platform today. The film starts with Seven working with their crew to mess with Milk for his birthday, a misguided prank involving a gun filled with blanks that devolves as they earn the ire of their creepy neighbor and, after a series of bad decisions, ends with the boys tied up in the desert with said neighbor dead at their feet. It’s an unthinkable, disastrous situation…and then Milk asks the audience if they want to know how he pulled it off. This huge switch turns the film into a chilling showcase of a thoroughly modern horror villain, Milk’s true nature drawing from incel culture and fragile masculinity to bring an internet troll to life in the worst way possible. The film only becomes more sickening from there, filled with haunting scenes of torture, psychological manipulation, and sickeningly realistic scenes of gore — and it was all done for only $800!
It can’t be understated how astounding it is that such a terrifying feature film was done for such a low budget. Most major horror pictures have literally a thousand times (most often more) that and still fail to reach the horrific heights of this film, speaking to how essential a good creative team is in making something genuinely scary. Pair this with Milk & Serial’s creators drawing from their own friends to round out the movie’s cast and utilizing easy public access settings for most of their scenes, and this film becomes one of the biggest testaments to how the horror genre has never needed huge price tags or endless effects. This is only the latest in a long line of projects that show YouTube as the new home for horror; whether it be Kane Pixels’ The Backrooms or Vivienne Medrano‘s hilarious series Helluva Boss, many use the platform to tell ingenious, spine-chilling stories. At the heart of all these are the creators, with Milk & Serial’s group of horror lovers especially showing their passion for this story by drawing from every resource they had available to bring it to life. And if the end result is any indication, they made it very clear that YouTube creators are as good as any major studio in making scary projects today and that energy is all you need to see a story come to life — and tons of good scares, of course.
YouTube is the True Home for Horror
For all the ways that it excels, that’s still not to say Milk & Serial is a perfect movie. Its low budget does show through in a few questionable effects that could take viewers out of the creepy story being told. But those moments are few and far between, and even more, that grounded lack of perfection adds to this movie’s nonstop horror. The whole purpose of the found footage subgenre is to draw viewers in, using this distinct style of filmmaking to have them really feel the main cast’s terror, and what better way to do that is by making each scene as realistic as possible? This entire project is an admirable feat, its team’s utility-based approach creating a cast with great chemistry and a story featuring hauntingly authentic scenes of terror. It’s an exceptionally horrifying movie, and by using its lack of “studio-worthy” resources to its advantage, the astounding group behind it helped solidify YouTube as a goldmine for modern Horror.
Milk & Serial is Available to Stream on YouTube in the U.S.
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