WARNING: Any information that may give away a key part of the film ‘Milk & Serial’ is fueled in this text and will reveal any spoilers present in the film.
Until now, one would never have imagined that Curry Barker would someday have the biggest box office success of the year.
Barker’s work ‘Milk & Serial’ is yet another economic success since its eclectic 800 dollar budget created a 62 minutes long movie where Youtube D list celebrities make a series of poorly thought-out attempts at pranks, each more intense than the last. Apart from that huge budget Barker costars with his friend and fellow comedian Cooper Tomlinson who is also one of the movie’s producers.
They are better known for their short sketches on TikTok and Youtube which are posted under a shared account ‘that’s a bad idea’ and for promoting other works of theirs like Barker’s video ‘The Chair’ which got over five and a half million views on the second platform. After a attending deals after the release of ‘Milk & Serial’ Barker published the movie on Youtube two weeks after its premiere directly. The movie has become an instant success garnering over 323 thousand views 18 days after the release date. The movie has also caused an uproar in forums devoted to fans of horror like Youtube or the popular hashtag #HorrorTok.
Many viewers of ‘The Chair’ have commented that ‘this guy needs a budget from Hollywood,’ says Barker,” he explains. “It’s the opposite with features, they usually feel more different than anticipated. There are critics specialized in reviewing feature films who wouldn’t even review a short film. But then all of a sudden you have videos that are talking about Alien: Romulus and Milk & Serial at the same time.’
We first hear Barker talking about his idea, where he not only appeared in the main role but was also responsible for direction, screenwriting, production, editing, co-cinematography and music. This is how he came up with the idea of the film: while shooting an acting reel.
“I wrote a comedy scene, I wrote a cowboy scene,” he goes. “I wrote all the scenes, and I wrote one serial killer scene because I thought I would look good acting out this creepy serial killer. This guy is telling this girl ‘It’s not a prank’ and that he will kill her at the end of the night. It was just for my reel but I thought, WOW, I could do a whole found footage flick. Cooper was in Tennessee shooting a movie, but I was like, ‘Dude, when you get back, we’re gonna make this.’”
From there, the duo began a four-month shoot with their friends playing additional characters and taking weekends off depending on everyone’s schedule. Most of the $800 budget was on paying the one actor outside the circle of friends (Jonnathon Cripple, who also participated in “The Chair”) and for the Sony camcorders which they used in the shoot. As luck would have it, Barker even made a $100 profit during the shooting of the camera as the filmmakers sold it after the shoot and they also recovered the rest of the money through YouTube adverts so the production went into profit in no time.
In terms of the decision to make the film available for free on Youtube, Barker admits that he did find a distributor that was ready to take it. However, after dealing with so much hassle with the firm to obtain formalities and releases that they should have catered for as an indie film bearing house, Barker itched to have his audience directly watching the work.
He states, “We simply wanted to provide it with the best shelter.” “We found, after completing all the necessary documentation and such, that, ‘For this company, it’s probably just a matter of putting it behind a paywall and someone paying $2.99 to watch it on Shudder or something. I see it so that our fans do not have to bear some exorbitant cost to watch this. They’ve looked at my IMDb poster for a year and asked, ‘What’s this all about? So, even after putting in serious effort for a year to get some form of distribution for this piece, we said Oh, forget it, threw it on YouTube. You just feel it makes sense to be on Netflix, Shudder, Hulu or any other service because of the respect of the industry. They do however respect it and the fact that it is free of charge as well.””
Barker’s independence also meant that he was able to reconfigure the work as he pleased. He particularly embraced this in the editing bay, in which he has been able to identify and know in which his comedy sketches and short films should be sliced in order to elicit the maximum amount of laughter or shocking moments.
“There exists an hour and a twenty-five minute version of this film,” he claims. “In fact, I cut off twenty minutes from it right before we uploaded it on Youtube in order to make it pace quicker. That’s why, in my imagination, I’m an editor and I watch a situation letting one imagine ‘Hey, let’s make it quicker.’ I think people would like how the pace of the movie is. You can hardly point it out since I have cut out some scenes because all the scenes are in the movie. It’s just trimming surplus material and since it’s a found footage film, it lets me make it feel quite rough around the edges when polishing the beats.’’
Barker, however, is not watching himself on television and pouring champagne over himself after having received good reviews from “Milk & Serial.” He is actively looking for main cast members for a feature length film called “Obsession”. This is produced by James Harris who has previously brought us hits such as “Fall’ and “47 Meters Down” through his production house Tea Shop Productions.
“In my entire life, I do not recall ever even having access to a budget.”, says Barker. “I penned this script eight months back and forth with this production firm and it is great.”
Barker further provides that although details such as the logline are still in the vault, shooting is likely to begin in late october.
It is total horror,” he explains. “It is frightening. It will be crazy. I think this movie will make everyone say wow. It is so different from ‘Milk & Serial’ … I’m not in this movie and it’s not going to be a found footage film. It is going to be more along the lines of the concept of ‘The Chair.’”
Now, Milk & Serial. What is next for it? According to Barker, he prefers to continue this production on the web, and while it can be said that the surviving character faintly raises the prospect of a potential sequel to the film in the credit scenes and remains off screen, he has other thoughts concerning the probability of further explaining the circumstances.
“If this thing just exploded and garnered an audience like say ‘Blair Witch’ or ‘Creep’, then maybe we would make a second part,” Barker says. “That would be wild. But at the moment, there is no such intention. What is interesting is that the picking up of the camera and the disposing of the pick was at once a bit of gas-lighting towards the viewers who had watched this long voyeur – who’d been a voyeur through most of the movie. I’m a writer, I don’t know who is picking up the camera. But it is wonderful to have everyone in the comment section voice what they think the motive was.”
Aaron Folbe at Underground and Gersh represents Barker alongside Yorn, Levine and their legal team, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich, Goodell and Gellman.
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