SPOILER ALERT: This article contains minor spoilers for “Milk & Serial”, now available to watch on YouTube.
Curry Barker delivered the most unlikely hit of the year.
The filmmaker and comedian is the mastermind behind “Milk & Serial,” a 62-minute horror film about YouTube pranksters who get into rapidly escalating crises that, ideally, aren't revealed in advance. The film cost just $800 to make and stars Barker and his comedy partner Cooper Tomlinson, who is also a producer.
The duo mostly posts sketch videos on their TikTok and YouTube channels “this is a bad idea,” while occasionally showcasing other projects, such as Barker's 2023 viral horror short “The Chair,” which has been viewed more than 5.5 million times on the latter. After considering working with a distributor for “Milk & Serial,” Barker decided to release the full film on YouTube on August 8. Since then, it has been viewed over 323,000 times (as of August 26) and sparked much discussion on horror fan hubs like Reddit, YouTube, and #HorrorTok.
“With 'The Chair,' there were a lot of comments like, 'Hollywood needs to give this guy a budget,'” Barker says. “But when you release a feature film, it feels different in a way I didn't expect. The people who make their living reviewing features are reviewing this film, which they wouldn't do with a short film. But suddenly you see videos reviewing both 'Alien: Romulus' and 'Milk & Serial.'”
Courtesy of Underground Films
Barker, who in addition to directing and starring in the film also served as writer, producer, editor, co-cinematographer and composer, came up with the idea while working on his acting role.
“I wrote a comedy scene, I wrote a cowboy scene,” he says. “I wrote all these different scenes, and I wrote a serial killer scene because I thought I could get this creepy serial killer vibe across. This guy tells this girl, 'This isn't a prank,' and that he's going to kill her at the end of the night. It was just for my movie, but I thought, whoa, I could make a whole found footage movie out of this. Cooper was in Tennessee shooting a movie, but I said, 'Dude, when you get back, we'll do this.'”
From there, the duo began a four-month shoot, with their friends playing other roles and working weekends depending on how many people were available. The majority of the $800 budget went toward paying the one actor outside of their circle of friends (Jonnathon Cripple, who also appeared in The Chair) and purchasing the Sony camcorder they used to shoot. Fortunately, Barker actually made $100 profit on the camera when the filmmakers sold it after shooting, and they quickly recouped the rest of the money through YouTube advertising, putting the production very quickly in the black.
As for the decision to release the film for free on YouTube, Barker says he found a distributor willing to take it on. But after working with the company to find the right forms and releases that they hadn't thought of for their indie production, Barker decided he wanted to get the project out directly to fans.
“We just wanted the best home for it,” he says. “Interestingly, once we had all the paperwork and everything was sorted out, we thought, 'Man, this distribution company is probably going to put it behind a paywall and someone is going to have to pay $2.99 to see it on Shudder or whatever it ends up being.' I think our fans deserve to have the opportunity to see it. They saw the poster on my IMDb for a year and were like, 'What is this?' So even though we worked really hard for a year to get distribution for this thing, we said screw it and put it on YouTube. I always used to feel like if it had to be on Netflix or Shudder or Hulu or whatever, you have to respect it as a real film. But people respect it and also respect that it's free.”
The freedom of self-publishing also allowed Barker to alter the project as he saw fit. He took this to heart especially in the editing room, where he could edit out the exact parts of his comedy sketches and short films where he could maximize the laughs or scares.
“The film is an hour and 25 minute cut,” he says. “Right before we posted it on YouTube, I cut 20 minutes to make it feel faster. I've always been an editor and I would just look at it and think, 'Oh, that beat, let's speed it up.' I think people would appreciate how fast the film moves. You couldn't cut out a specific scene that I cut out because every scene is still in the film. It's just about trimming the fat, and because it's a found footage film, I can make it feel a little choppy to refine the beats.”
Courtesy of Underground Films
Although Milk & Serial received a good reception, Barker isn't sitting around popping champagne. He's in the process of casting a feature film called Obsession. James Harris, who produced horror hits like Fall and 47 Meters Down, is attached through his Tea Shop Productions banner.
“I've never had a budget in my life,” says Barker. “I worked on this script with this production company for over eight months and it was absolutely fantastic.”
Although details, including the logline, are being kept secret, Barker says filming is expected to begin in late October.
“It's horror – absolute horror,” he says. “It's terrifying. It's going to be crazy. I think this movie is unlike anything anyone has ever seen. It's so different from 'Milk & Serial'… I'm not in it and it's not going to be a found footage movie. It's going to be shot more like 'The Chair.'”
And what about the future of Milk & Serial? Barker is glad that production is staying online, and although the film's bloody ending hints at a sequel, with an unseen figure picking up the camera, he believes that mystery is best left to the imagination rather than explained in yet another chapter.
“If this thing just took off and became a cult classic like Blair Witch or Creep, maybe we could do a sequel,” Barker says. “That would be crazy. But right now there's no plan. I think the funny thing is that the camera shooting was a kind of gaslighting to the audience who was watching this guy gaslight the whole movie. As a writer, I have no idea who's shooting the camera. But it's so funny that everyone in the comments is speculating who it was.”
Barker is represented by Aaron Folbe at Underground and Gersh and the legal team of Yorn, Levine, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich, Goodell and Gellman.
Watch the film below.
