"Milo" is a film that undeniably has a lot of reasons not to take it seriously, and would make a lot of people dismiss it after the first 30 minutes. I belong to a small crowd of people who love this movie and accept it for what it is, leaving the flaws on the side. The budget is low, there is technical and directing sloppiness and there are a lot of script irregularities. All these things spell "bad movie" in capital letters, but in some way, "Milo" works well and not in a patronizing way. I find the story to be rather dark, as it features some genuinely disturbing scenes, and the villain is pretty distinctive and creepy.
The story begins with a group of little girls meeting a strange boy named Milo Jeeder. The girls go to Milo's house, which is also his father's office, a sinister gynecologist who performs clandestine abortions. The strange boy is playing "the doctor" with the girls and he inexplicably stabs one of them to death.
About 20 years later, one of the girls who survived the tragedy appears as an apathetic substitute teacher named Claire Mullins, who lives a very lonely life and her only "friend" is her goldfish pet (for real). Claire gets a wedding invitation from Ruth, one of her childhood friends, and she unwillingly returns to her hometown to assist the ceremony. When Claire arrives, she is informed that Ruth passed away in a car accident, but she stays in town anyway, where she gets to reconnect with her two childhood friends, Abby and Marian (sure, why the hell not?).
Though we find out that Milo supposedly drowned many years ago, Claire believes she has seen him on the street and still looking like a young boy. Abby and Marian assume that Claire is having hallucinations because she's back in her childhood town, but the truth is that Milo really is alive and out to get them. Hopeless and desperate, Claire tries to find someone who believes her, but everyone presumes that she is insane, and in the meantime, her friends start to vanish inexplicably.
My main concern with "Milo" is that there are some script irregularities that leave a bunch of things unclear, and it is evident that the lack of details to explain certain things are the result of lazy writing, rather than a deliberate attempt to leave some mystery for the benefit of the story. The idea behind "Milo" is very good, but the script is not very consistent, as there are a lot of things that don't make sense, mostly concerning the characters' nature, which are poorly written in many scenes. The dialogs are silly and artificial (which I can overlook in a slasher film), but the main problem is that the characters' actions are incomprehensible sometimes. For example: why does Milo suddenly decide to reappear after 20 years and start murdering his childhood acquaintances? Should we just assume that he is mad because one of them is getting married, which pushes him over the edge? How come the girls seem so well after their friend's death? I mean, first, we see Marian and Abby telling Claire that Ruth passed away and in the next scene, we see them laughing and remembering the old times? I didn't expect a tear-fest, but they seemed pretty okay with the idea of Ruth being dead, kind of like "Poor Ruth
but we might as well just make the best of this reunion, right? Let's have a few drinks!" I don't find this very coherent, especially because these girls are otherwise portrayed as caring and sensitive characters.
"Milo" features almost no gore, since most of the murders are very subtle, and some of them are even off-screen. I don't necessarily expect gore in every horror film as a rule, but "Milo" belongs to the slasher sub-genre and in films like this, some gore is required. The lack of gore is balanced by disturbing imagery, mostly featuring Milo and his father, in their dark house, in which we get to see an antique cabinet full of jars containing fetuses and stillborns, and an embalmed body in the basement.
The acting is mostly good. The late Vincent Schiavelli gave a solid performance as Milo's dad, partly because of his physique du rol, but also because of his intentional deadness in his mannerisms and the sinister look in his eyes. As for Jennifer Jostyn, I like her a lot and even though he acting is mostly okay, a little bit more energy and strength would have been fine. What I like the most about this film is basically the character of Milo, which is an interesting villain. The fact that he looks the same throughout a period of 20 years makes us wonder what is wrong with him and though we never really get an explanation, one can only imagine that Milo's lack of growth is due to the fact that he was brought back to life by his father after his alleged death, which somehow affected his normal development. Once again, this is another reason to complain about the weak script, because honestly this should have been clearer.
I admit it, "Milo" is a faulted film, but a very entertaining one and it seems like there are a lot of people who either take it for what it is and love it, and in the same way, there's a lot of people who latch on to the obvious oversights to oust the film. I try not to let the imperfections bother me and enjoy the movie for what it is: a slasher about a weird zombie child using a yellow raincoat (even if it's not raining), who wants to kill his childhood friends and keeps their embalmed bodies and dress them in wedding gowns. I certainly don't think it deserves the 4/10 rating that it got on IMDb.
