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A new microbudget horror movie titled Milk & Serial has gone viral on YouTube. Made by Curry Barker, Milk & Serial is a 62-minute-long horror movie whose plot centers around a group of YouTube pranksters who get wrapped up in a series of troubling events that grow in severity. The film was released for free on YouTube two weeks ago.

Now, that's a bad idea's Milk & Serial has become an unexpected viral hit. You can watch it below:

The film premiered on August 8, and was made by Barker alongside his comedy partner, Cooper Tomlinson. Tomlinson and Barker are also both producers and actors for the film. In just under three weeks on the platform, Milk & Serial has amassed over 388,000 views on YouTube. Even more remarkable is the fact that the found footage horror film was made for a microbudget of just $800. Tomlinson and Barker enlisted their friends to...

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.

If the commercial and critical success of horror films from Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger, and David Gordon Green in recent years illustrates anything, it’s that folks in the comedy biz can often serve up major doses of effective white-knuckle chills. With the buzz following the recently released trailer for “Saturday Night Live” alum Kyle Mooney’s upcoming Y2K, the Hollywood comedy-to-horror pipeline is clearly functioning in full force–and we’d happily welcome more from impassioned cross-genre creators like these.

Enter Milk & Serial, a found footage horror feature that premiered on YouTube this month courtesy of That’s a Bad Idea, an up-and-coming comedy duo made up of film-school-pals-turned-collaborators Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson.

Written/directed by Barker and produced by Tomlinson, Milk & Serial follows a well-known social media comedy team (played by Barker and Tomlinson) whose lives are thrown into a tailspin following a birthday prank intended for their channel.