User reviews

A friend recommended I watch this, and I'm really glad he did. In an age of vacuous YouTube influencers and vloggers, this is a brilliant concept: take the format that I personally find pretty repulsive, and spin it on its head by putting the iPhone in the hands of a Gen Z psychopath.

The whole thing sucks you in by being extremely believable, thanks to some eerily well acted early scenes. The twists keep coming and thanks to some really snappy editing this film hits you right between the eyes.

Like a found-footage version of Man Bites Dog, this is a really exciting find, which is completely free on YouTube. The fact that this thing is available on the very platform it is slyly critiquing is a brilliant twist in itself, however it's the plot developments in this short film that will have you watching it for a second time almost immediately.

Hollywood must surely beckon for the cast and director.

"Milk & Serial" is a 2024 found footage horror film that explores the dark side of online fame and the dangers of crossing lines for content. The film follows two roommates and social media influencers, Milk and Seven, who push the boundaries of their pranks to increasingly dangerous levels. When a birthday prank goes horribly wrong, the pair find themselves entangled in a terrifying and deadly game with a mysterious entity.

The film effectively uses the found footage format to create a sense of immediacy and realism, immersing the viewer in the escalating chaos. The performances are strong, particularly from Curry Barker who plays Milk, capturing the character's descent into obsession and desperation.

"Milk & Serial" is a chilling exploration of the thin line between entertainment and exploitation, and the consequences of prioritizing views and likes over human decency. It serves as a cautionary tale about the potential dangers of social media and the importance of ethical content creation.

This review does not contain spoilers

POSITIVES:

• Realistic acting
• Disturbing
• Good story

MIXED: Not really

NEGATIVES:

• Predictable
• Hopefully better budget if they make another

OVERALL:

• Was bored and scrolling through my for you page when I came across Milk and Serial. I am typically not a huge fan of the found footage subgenre, but this has everything I want in one of those types of movie. This is by no means a perfect film, but a good one at that. This movie is very disturbing, fun and quirky. But, some setbacks are just quality but it's for sure excusable because they had an estimated budget of 800$. Another is it's gore factor although it's understandable because of YouTube's guidelines. In conclusion, Milk and Serial is a fun found footage horror with some setbacks, so I give it a 6/10.

Curry Barker who plays Milk, has delivered a very unique piece of entertainment surrounding a cunning serial killer. Milk & his best friend Seven have a YouTube channel called 'prank bros' and they have some pretty serious pranks that's they play on each other. The film begins with the making of a prank, Seven is clearly the more serious one of the two of them, and plans to play a rather cruel prank on Milk, on his birthday of all days. The prank all goes slightly sinister when what appears to be a neighbour shows up at the door complaining about the noise and acting very sketchy. The film sounds simple but ends up full of twists and turns, with a bit of welcomed unpredictability. For a short movie, filmed on purpose in a kind of amateur way deliberately, it was really good. Definitely worth watching as it trumps the amount of entertaining you get from most films in a shorter amount of time. Also the acting from Milk was remarkable, I will now be checking out his other short movies and hope to see more of Curry Barkers name in the future.

I was unfamiliar with Curry Barker and his YouTube channel where he and his team have made several short movies in the past, however Milk & Serial had quite a lot of people talking and therefore I needed to check it out.

The movie is made with a a budget of $800, which is astonishing because they managed to make a pretty good movie, which was seriously entertaining and quite enjoyable overall. The acting was really convincing which surprised me because low budget productions often suffer from really bad acting, however Curry Barker, Cooper Tomlinson and the rest of the cast all do a commendable job. The movie offers quite some twists and therefore definitely is able to keep the audience's attention which also shouldn't be that big of a task with about an hour of runtime, however there were multiple moments where I was thrown off guard for a second because the story switched up. There are movies out there with similar themes so it's not completely original but nonetheless it managed to be quite unique with its narrative. Obviously there are no massive special effects or gruesome gore, but that kept the whole atmosphere really realistic, which is another element that worked really well. The found footage aspect, the believable acting and the realistic narrative really gave this movie a scarily realistic feeling. Obviously this movie was far from perfect and there are flaws as well, however I think they can be mostly overlooked and I would definitely like to see more from these young filmmakers. This was by far better than many of the latest Hollywood projects, especially when it comes to horror. However you have to keep in mind that this really low budget is the crucial argument for this movie's success and love. If you take away this aspect the movie is still a well done Horror-Thriller but nothing groundbreaking and while it grabs your attention in the moment, it lacks the depth to remain memorable. [5,6/10]

The film's atmosphere captures a raw, gritty vibe, blurring the line between what's playful and what's unsettling. It's smartly paced, offering just enough time to figure out the ambiguity before diving deep into the darker side of things. The interplay between the characters creates an engaging dynamic, and the found-footage style enhances the believability, making it feel like you're unraveling the truth alongside them. The tension builds gradually, but once the facade drops, it gets uncomfortable in the best way. It's refreshing how it doesn't overstay its welcome, staying concise while maintaining suspense. "What do you mean you don't like it?"

Milk and Serial follows two friends who have an extremely popular YouTube channel based on pranks. The movie starts with Milk's birthday party and things go south pretty quickly but what makes this not just another found footage horror flick is the acting and the script. I am a huge fan of found footage movies and I've seen the majority of them. Milk and Serial blows 99% of them out of the water. Everyone in the cast did an amazing job, but especially Milk and Seven (two main guys). You can feel their friendship (not matter how strange of a relationship they have). While this movie is only an hour long it packs a punch. A+

Attempting a big social media prank, a group of friends try to continually get one over on each other as the experience draws them into the long-hidden psychopathic intuitions of one of the group's depressed past that sets them off into a race against time to stop their unhinged plans from coming true.

Overall, this was a solid enough indie genre effort. One of the finer aspects with this one is the engrossing and likable setup that features quite a lot of likable elements to it. The initial setup with the friend-group who are going around setting up the exploits of their channel and relationship with each other by setting up elaborate and harmful pranks on each other for a birthday surprise gets this established quite nicely so that the later exploits are far more believable. Not knowing whether or not the series of crazed incidents, from encountering the stranger in the apartment to the suicide attempts by the figure they come across, and the bizarre kidnapping scheme that quickly goes array, there's a genuinely thrilling and immersive experience that all builds up a fantastic showcase for the eventual devolution into insanity that comes about as how he treats his friends over time helps this out immensely. Beyond this, though, there's not much to this one that stands out. The type of setup featured here generating vicious and somewhat illegal pranks on people for the sake of views on their video channel makes the group so unlikable it's hard to get invested in what's going on with the friends barely being worth investing this much time into. As this is due to the prank-video nature of the channel so no one can be believed or trusted, that just adds even more to what's going on here There's also the fact that there's so many obvious instances in which psychotic behavior becomes quite underwhelming to see play out as too many obvious red flags are ignored for the sake of moving a story along that's quite cliche and familiar. As well as a lackluster finale that makes for so many rule-breaking moments of found-footage throughout here, these all manage to bring this one down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

Fun. Original yet Inspired(Patrick Brice's Duplas Creep and the Winter's Deadstream come to mind). Creepy. Disturbing. Found footage takes on an extra creepy aesthetic watching it from a YouTube channel. But that's what Curry Barker and his team at That's a Bad Idea YouTube channel create in Milk & Serial. This terrifying story gets under your skin. If you aren't checking out Horror from filmmakers/creators of YouTube, and TikTok or other digital short form streaming platforms, you're missing out on some really original and sometimes very spooky new and exciting filmmakers; and you're not appreciating how the art form is and has been evolving, especially since the dawn of YouTube. Scorsese said it best "my hopes are such that with the new technology and the new generations and younger people seeing the world in a different way, that cinema will evolve itself into a new form," when filmmaking is at your fingertips, who's to stop you from creating your own movie. Let's hope Barker gets a movie deal like the minds behind Talk to Me- but then again, it being on YouTube made it even scarier for this audience member.

The movie starts with a party and goes from bad to worse, and our leading actor, Curry Barker, showed a good performance, but I found the movie inadequate, the fiction was not satisfactory at some point, and the events took place in an even more strange way, it has an interesting plot, but I didn't like it cinematically, even halfway through. I was bored, at least the black comedy theme was enough to make me watch the movie, it was interesting that it touched on basic problems and delved into the problems of daily life, but as I said, it is not enough to enjoy it.

Curry Barker is an important work, so if you are curious, I recommend you watch it, but don't expect too much, but it is an important found footage movie in the B movie genre.

A lot of found footage horror movies over the years would have been a lot better served had they leaned into a shorter runtime. 90 minutes of footage is a seriously long time to justify someone keeping a camera running for. If 'Milk & Serial' had tried to push for an extra half an hour it could have undone all the great work this little gem of a film had created. This was a good one.

This was everything I like in a good found footage film. It's dark and constantly twisting and we know it is all building up to a treacherous ending. As far as this sub-genre goes, the acting is pretty good as well.

For a film available free on YouTube this was a great little treat. 9/10.

Directed, written, and starred by Curry Barker, Milk & Serial follows the events after a birthday prank goes wrong.

Milk (Curry Barker) and Seven (Cooper Tomlinson) are two friends and part of a creative collective that makes prank videos online. They are very successful at what they do, and when Milk's birthday party arrives, Seven devises a plan to pull a prank. One thing leads to another, and they find themselves immersed in unforeseen turns of events, making what started as a comedy become a real nightmare.

With a runtime of 62 minutes, the movie never ceases to be engaging and entertaining. There is something that found footage captures, and it is the feeling that what you are watching is real and not a movie.

A couple years back that kid from stranger things released a found footage horror movie called Spree. It's about a murderous, incel, wannabe influencer that goes on a killing spree. It was so bad that I made people watch it, not because it was funny-bad, but because I needed to share my anger with others---- this is like if that movie was good.

In general, I find found-footage to be boring and unimaginative. I gave this a shot, because I think Curry Barker & Cooper Tomlinson are funny in sort of a GreatValue™ I Think You Should Leave way. I was ready for this to be bad. Almost expecting it - but I was pleasantly surprised. It's fairly straightforward - Maybe a little bit derivative or predictable at times, but Barkers performance is what sells it. I was not prepared for him to be 1) good at acting 2) actually horrifying. Worth the watch. An impressive directorial debut.

This movie was surprisingly good, actually very good! It's been on my radar for a while, but I just kept procrastinating, mainly because it was free on YouTube, so I was not in any rush to check it out.

• That was a mistake, because I wish I checked it out a lot sooner.

-So many great things about this movie, the story was great, kept you guessing, had no idea what was going to happen next. It has a homemade feel, with an original story that they nailed on the time, it did not have to be any longer. It was so good that I really really hope that they make a part two, we really need a part two.

-also, it was not shaky, or have any bad music or anything corny, -This is how you do found footage camera the right way! LOVED IT !

Or was it help me, help you? Well same difference and no pun intended of course. The movie is quite enraging if you do not get behind the basic idea of people pranking each other and going to quite the lengths to do so .. I always wondered how crazy one is to certain things, when almost everyone in America seems to have a gun ... you never know how they will react.

That aside, the (almost short) movie is really well told. You have to get used to the whole "found footage" thing, but it serves the story. And it really is important to be that way too ... money wise this I reckon almost cost nothing, but it is about story and characters ... and it really gets it for the most part ... so if you like independent horror movies ... well go ahead and watch is what I would say.

Ok... so i'm gonna start off by sayin im constantly looking for food footage movies ...hell house llc has to be my favorite... with that being said if you're into the megan's missing , be my pet , poughkeepsie tapes , hangman , or even faces of death ... this one in my opinion is wayyyyy better ... i came in not thinking much of it but the tittle had me interested. From the start this movie gets you .... its not slow paced like most were all the action is in the last segment and we come to a end after all that build up.... no this one kept my attention the acting was amazing !!! Curry playing milk made me feel uncomfortable and i felt uneasy watching this movie ( ina a good way ) ... from start to finish i was invested in the characters ... i didn't spend time predicting what's next because the pacing of the movie kept me in tuned ....if you're a fan of food footage i strongly suggest watching this one !!!

This is absolute top tier found footage independent horror filmmaking. The twists keep you guessing the whole runtime. I won't spoil it, but the ending is damn good. If you have an hour, do yourself a favor and go watch it, now.

Much respect to Curry Barker!

Congrats, and you should feel proud.

Bravo 👏 to all involved.

And YouTube was the perfect platform to put this up.

Acting 10/10 (And terrifyingly real) Directing 10/10 (all choices were brilliant) Writing 10/10 (the twists are maddeningly great) Sound Design 10/10 (It's all too real; which is horrifying, and amazing)

Anybody that loves found footage will be so happy to have another wonderful entry to the genre that unfortunately has far too many underwhelming movies under its label.

I got to know about this film from a video by the YouTube channel, Spooky Astronauts. And it was the best thing that I have done in some time.

This film is the best found footage film in 2024.

At the beginning, I thought that it would be a simple story with the found footage aspect just added to it unnecessarily. But, I was wrong. Milk and Serial perfectly blends the 'Serial' into the 'Milk' giving us an interesting take in the found footage genre (You saw what I did there.. Serial in the milk😂).

An hour long film made on a budget of 800$ successfully delivers which many Hollywood films fail to do. I can just imagine the quality of films Curry Barker and his team would end up with if they are given a budget of a Hollywood film.

This film kept me hooked on my bed and made me want more by the time it ended. A part of the film which I loved the most was the whole 'mask ideology' (not a spoiler😅).

It's available on YouTube for free. I would recommend this film to every one who is a fan of the found footage genre.