How ‘Milk & Serial,’ a Clever Slasher Made for $800 and Released for Free on YouTube, Became a Must-Watch for Horror Fans

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains minor spoilers for “Milk & Serial ,” now available to watch on YouTube.

Curry Barker has delivered the year’s most unlikely hit.

The filmmaker and comedian is the mastermind behind “Milk & Serial,” a 62-minute horror feature about YouTube pranksters who get caught up in some rapidly escalating crises that ideally aren’t spoiled in advance. Made for only $800, the film co-stars Barker and his comedy partner, Cooper Tomlinson, who is also a producer.

The duo mainly posts sketch videos to their TikTok and YouTube channels “that’s a bad idea,” while occasionally showcasing other projects, like Barker’s viral 2023 horror short “The Chair,” which has been watched on the latter more than 5.5 million times. After considering working with a distributor for “Milk & Serial,” Barker decided to drop the full movie on YouTube on Aug. 8. Since then, it’s been watched over 323,000 times (as of Aug. 26) and fostered lots of discussion on horror fan hubs like Reddit, YouTube and #HorrorTok.

“On ‘The Chair,’ there was a lot of comments like ‘Hollywood needs to give this guy a budget,'” Barker says. “But when you put a feature out there, it feels different in a way I didn’t expect. The people who review feature films for a living are reviewing this movie, something they wouldn’t do for a short film. But all of a sudden you’re seeing videos that discuss both “Alien: Romulus’ and ‘Milk & Serial.'”

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 as he was working on his acting reel.

“I wrote a comedy scene, I wrote a cowboy scene,” he says. “I wrote all these different scenes, and I wrote one serial killer scene because I thought I could pull off this creepy serial killer vibe. This guy’s telling this girl ‘It’s not a prank’ and that he’s gonna kill her at the end of the night. It was just for my reel but I thought, whoa, I could make this into a whole found footage movie. 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 embarked on a four-month shoot with their friends playing other roles and working weekends depending on everyone’s availability. The bulk of the $800 budget went to pay the one actor outside of their social group (Jonnathon Cripple, who also appeared in “The Chair”) and to buy the Sony camcorder they shot it on. Luckily, Barker actually made a $100 profit on the camera when the filmmakers sold it after the shoot, and they quickly made back the rest of the money through YouTube advertising, so the production went into the black very quickly.

As for the decision to release the film for free on YouTube, Barker says he did find a distributor that was willing to take it on. Yet after working with the company to chase down the proper forms and releases they hadn’t thought to prepare for their indie production, Barker decided he wanted the project to be seen by their fans directly.

“We just wanted the best home for it,” he says. “Interestingly enough, after getting all the right paperwork and everything settled, we thought, ‘Man, this distribution company is probably just going to put it behind a paywall, and someone’s gonna have to pay $2.99 to watch it on Shudder or whatever it ends up being on.’ I feel like our fans deserve to have the opportunity to watch this. They’ve seen the poster on my IMDb for a year and wondered, ‘What is this?’ So even though we worked really hard for a year trying to get distribution for this thing, we said screw it and threw it on YouTube. Before, I always felt to be respected as a real movie it has to be on Netflix or Shudder or Hulu or whatever. But people do respect it and respect that it’s for free, too.”

The freedom of self-distribution also allowed Barker to modify the project on his terms. He took this especially to heart in the editing bay, where he’s been able to pinpoint in his comedy sketches and short films where exactly to cut moments to maximize laughs or scares.

“There’s an hour and 25-minute cut of this movie,” he says. “Right before we posted it on YouTube, I shaved off 20 minutes just to make it feel quicker. I’ve always been an editor and I was just watching it and thought, ‘Oh, this beat, let’s make it faster.’ I think people would appreciate how quickly the film moves. You couldn’t pinpoint a certain scene that I cut, because every scene is still in the movie. It’s just cutting the fat, and because it’s a found footage movie, that allows me to have it feel a little choppy to fine-tune the beats.”

Despite getting a solid reception from “Milk & Serial,” Barker isn’t sitting around popping champagne. He’s currently casting a feature film called “Obsession.” James Harris, who has produced horror hits such as “Fall” and “47 Meters Down,” is attached via his Tea Shop Productions banner.

“I’ve never had a budget in my life,” Barker says. “I worked on this script for over eight months back and forth with this production company and it’s been absolutely amazing.”

Although details, including the logline, are under wraps, Barker says that shooting is expected to start in late October.

“It’s horror — completely horror,” he says. “It’s terrifying. It’s going to be insane. This movie is unlike anything I think anyone’s ever seen. It’s so different from ‘Milk & Serial’ … I’m not in it and it will not be a found footage movie. It’ll be shot more like ‘The Chair.'”

As for the future of “Milk & Serial”? Barker is happy to keep the production online, and although the film’s bloodbath ending briefly teases a sequel by having the camera get picked up by an unseen character, he thinks that mystery is best left up to the imagination instead of explaining it in another chapter.

“If this thing just took off and became a cult classic like ‘Blair Witch’ or ‘Creep,’ then maybe we could do a sequel,” Barker says. “That would be crazy. But right now there’s no plan. I think what’s funny is that the picking up of the camera was kind of a gaslight to the audience, who’s been watching this guy gaslight for the whole movie. As a writer, I have no idea who’s picking up the camera. But having everyone in the comments speculate about who did is so fun.”

Barker is repped by Aaron Folbe at Underground and Gersh, along with the legal team of Yorn, Levine, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich, Goodell & Gellman.

Watch the film below.