I am finally seeing Obsession tonight, so I decided to watch what is technically Curry Barker’s feature-length debut in Milk & Serial (I am aware it was released straight to YouTube). Literally all I knew about this before I clicked play was that it was a found footage movie and was about something that had to do with a prank gone wrong. I was genuinely shocked by how good this sixty-minute movie was despite its mere eight-hundred dollar budget.

I am writing this review before I leave to go and watch Obsession, so I’m indefinitely going to finish it after already having seen that movie. Anyways, this movie was already proof that Curry Barker has a massive amount of talent and is really going to go places. If he could make something so engaging with this budget (and the fact that this is his first movie), just imagine what he could do with millions of dollars worth of production. Found footage is obviously cheaper the vast majority of the time, but this is such a more grounded and down-to-earth version of it that I haven’t really seen before. It very much has that feeling of a bunch of friends just getting together and making something for the fun of it, which is extremely inspiring as someone who really wants to get into filmmaking.

The story structure kept me heavily intrigued the vast majority of the time and had a lot of mystery to it that I wanted to see fully come together by the end. It’s one of those stories that just gives you bits and pieces that you have to try and put together solely on your own, until everything comes to a conclusion. Surprisingly, Milk & Serial doesn’t do any sort of job that would make you think that this was coming from someone just starting to get into making films. Everything fits perfectly together, just like something you would expect from an experienced screenwriter.

And I really do mean this: the acting isn’t just good considering the production costs or the fact that this was a first for most of the people who worked on it. No, the acting is actually surprisingly great. The two main characters, Milk and Seven, are played by two friends who run the very popular YouTube comedy skit channel “that’s a bad idea,” the director himself, Curry Barker, along with Cooper Tomlinson respectively. There are plenty of other side characters, most of which are part of the main characters’ friend group, and they all do a great job, though aren’t in it enough to really comment on much. Curry and Cooper, and especially Copper, on the other hand, actually have several scenes where they do have to sell their acting in a very believable way, and they absolutely nail it. The stress, the agony, and everything that their characters are going through after the “events” are very convincing. Is it Oscar-caliber acting? No, but they fulfill their roles perfectly. I guess this is a little bit of a spoiler for my review of Obsession (which I have seen now), but it’s insane to me that Curry can both direct and act so well at such a young age and so early on into his career.

There are also plenty of surprises that really did catch me off guard throughout the runtime. I did go in expecting something impressive for a straight-to-YouTube indie film, but I was inherently also expecting something fairly cliché to a degree. Well, it’s not. This is very original and something that I haven’t really seen done before, and all of the shocking moments hit for me.

The only flaw that holds Milk & Serial down a little bit isn’t the story itself, but rather the way it tells its story. It’s very much going for this time-based gimmick that works exceptionally well when it comes to giving you bits and pieces of information to put together to ultimately understand everything that is going on, but at the same time, it definitely feels like some pacing was ignored as a result. It actually heavily reminded me of the movie Following, Christopher Nolan’s film debut, which is actually kind of a compliment, I guess. Nolan is obviously very much famous for the way he tells a lot of his stories, especially when they mess with time, but Following definitely felt like someone testing the waters with that approach to narrative structure, and the same thing can be said for Milk & Serial. While there are effective elements to the time gimmick here, every time something happens with it, it definitely does feel like the forward momentum is being lost a bit. It’s not a major gripe whatsoever, just something that is still definitely prominent and worth bringing up.

After watching several of Curry’s comedy YouTube skits, I was very eager to check out his film stuff, and this very much surprised me. I am absolutely rooting for this guy and can’t wait to see what the future holds for him.