Milk and Serial is a 2024 found footage-style horror/crime/thriller on YouTube that follows a couple of friends descending into madness as their pranks get more and more insane. From the Youtube comedy duo Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson of That’s a Bad Idea, the two are no strangers to horror. Curry won Best Film at the LA Short Film Festival for his 2023 short horror film The Chair and has directed several others.
Milk and Serial follows friends Milk (Baker) and Seven (Tomlinson), who run a prank YouTube channel together. For Milk’s birthday, Seven decides to go big with a prank, which Milk then retaliates with his prank and things escalate beyond their beliefs, or so it would seem.
The movie is great at balancing tones. Maybe it’s not even balancing, but the movie can flip from having a seemingly good time to something psychotic so fast without feeling out of place. The duo of Milk and Seven have a very close fraternal bond. Outside of being roommates, you can tell they know exactly the intimate details of each other’s mindsets and as we see later in the movie, what makes each other tick.
Curry Baker is extremely talented both in front of the camera and behind it. As an actor, he is incredible at looking so normal and unassuming while hiding a sociopath underneath the surface. Behind the scenes, his dialogue with everyone is extremely natural. This is a found footage film so the dialogue above all else has to feel natural and like a conversation. There may have been a few times where it felt like characters were having unnatural conversations to give the audience exposition, but for the most part, it does its job. As a comedian, the black comedy also stands out with perfect timing.
Cooper Tomlinson is Baker’s perfect foil as Seven. It’s clear he’s the more charismatic figure on the channel; he’s the one who I’d imagine is speaking 70% of the time when they’re recording. I love that he’s the one who’s orchestrating the prank on Milk and he’s the one who ends up slowly descending into madness. He does a good job of balancing being arrogant and still deserving of our empathy.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I started seeing a lot of tweets about this movie being one of the most interesting YouTube horror movies of the year and I came away agreeing with this. Milk and Serial does a great job of displaying a person’s descent into madness at the hands of a sociopath and it is a fascinating watch. It is free to watch here and I truly recommend it.
