Curry Barker might be all over social media right now because of his upcoming film Obsession — and his new tenure as a Texas Chainsaw Massacre director — but that wasn’t where he originally found fame with horror fans. Ahead of Obsession hitting theaters worldwide this weekend, you can catch his debut feature film, Milk & Serial, which made waves when it premiered for free on YouTube.
Released in 2024, Milk & Serial went viral after Barker and his creative partner Cooper Tomlinson released the film for free on YouTube following the success of their short film The Chair, as well as a stint running a sketch comedy channel called That’s a Bad Idea. Racking up 2.4 million views as of the writing of this article, the project, which starred Barker, Tomlinson, and Jonnathon Cripple, follows a pair of YouTubers who torment each other for clicks, only for one to find out that his partner is much more committed to the bit — and not in a good way.
The crazy thing? They made the entire film for $800.
And if you’re thinking that any of it went towards costumes, props, or sets, you’d be wrong. All $800 Barker and Tomlinson funnelled into Milk & Serial was used entirely to pay Cripple (who also appeared in The Chair), and to purchase the camera on which they shot the film — which they subsequently sold again once filming was finished. Shot on weekends over the course of four months, the film is lean, mean, and a shocking success for Barker, having been catapulted to Hollywood levels of success by its viral fame.
The idea originally came from Barker writing his own acting reel — which comes as no surprise, considering he’s credited as writer, director, star, producer, editor, co-cinematographer, and producer on Milk & Serial. (Is there anything he can’t do?)
“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,” Barker told Variety shortly after the film’s release. “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.'”
But the choice to release the entire film for free on YouTube wasn’t immediate for Barker, nor was it easy. He and Tomlinson spent an entire year trying to land a distributor for the film, with plenty of rejections, and when they finally got close to a deal, he eventually said, in his words, “screw it and threw it on YouTube.”
“We just wanted the best home for it,” he told Variety. “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. …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.”
And respect it they do. Milk & Serial is not the only popular horror project available on YouTube — there’s also things like Portrait of God, which is getting its own adaptation, and the original Backrooms shorts — but it remains free to this day, despite his rising fame and plenty of independent films getting snapped up by streamers left and right. Sites like Variety and The Guardian praised the film upon its release, and it continues to be a cornerstone of Barker’s experience as a filmmaker, one that carries into his new projects.
“I kind of have to put myself in a box when I'm writing [new films] and just try to go back to the days when I made those shorts,” he told FANGORIA during the press tour for Obsession. “Because when I made those short films, I was untouchable, right? I could fly. It could suck, but it wouldn't matter. I had no one to answer to. I wrote a movie about a chair, and I put it on YouTube, and there's no pressure for it to be good.”
And while fans are looking forward to Barker’s new projects, including a new Texas Chainsaw movie and the horror comedy Anything But Ghosts, they still look back at Milk & Serial as one of the most impressive feats of horror filmmaking in the last several years. And honestly? We don’t blame them.
Obsession is in theaters now, and you can stream Milk & Serial for free on YouTube.
