Guest writer Cameron Johnson reviews Bad Milo! (2013); a hilarious and meaningful gem in a sea of Netflix trash.
The advent of streaming sites, Netflix especially, has given at-home movie watchers affordable access to a wide variety of films, all available at the press of a button. No facet of cinema has benefitted more from this revolution than indie films and B-Movies, which dominate the selections available to bored and indecisive TV users looking for a night of escapism.
Netflix offers an almost ridiculous array of B-Movies, most of them low-budget horror. The user-generated ratings for the majority of these movies is dismal, with utterly unwatchable movies such as The Gingerdead Man providing little more than unwatchable trash that inspires the viewer to do nothing more than press stop.
Some of the low-budget films available for streaming manage to exceed their monetary limits and are entertaining, and sometimes meaningful, enough to be worth your 90 or so minutes. Hansel and Gretel Get Baked, a humorous stoner parody of the classic children’s tale, and Exam, an intrusive psychological drama filmed entirely in one room, are two examples of ready-for-streaming low budget movies that fall into this more reputable category.
One film I watched recently, Bad Milo! (directed by Jacob Vaughan), is another Netflix B-Movie that exceeds expectations and earns its 90 minutes.
A film with the most ridiculous premise I’ve heard for a monster movie, a man inflicted by a strange parasite that comes out of his behind and kills people that cause him stress, Bad Milo! does the near impossible by framing characters in a way that makes us care about them and providing copious laughs along the way, all of them deserved.
The movie’s hero is Duncan (Children’s Hospital’s Ken Marino), a man with a boring office job who at the very start of the film is visiting a doctor (Toby Huss) with his wife, Sarah (Gillian Jacobs), to find out what has been causing his digestive tract so much trouble in the past few weeks. “Stress” the doctor diagnoses. He couldn’t be more right.
What Duncan soon finds out, in hilarious fashion, is that his problems are more than health-related and soon he’s seeing people he’s stressed by - from his annoying workmates to the fertility doctor his mom (Mary Kay Place) recommends to him and his wife - killed in bloody and often gross-out fashion.
The film’s best scenes come when Duncan tries, with the help of a superstitious therapist (Peter Stormare), to figure out his unfortunate affliction. Around the corner always is the opportunity that the monster could rip itself out of Duncan’s pants and go on a killing spree, and the director Jacob uses suspense and comedy to make this clear. There’s some sad, touching, and even philosophical moments when Duncan’s long-estranged father (Stephen Root) becomes involved, but that’s best left a surprise.
Bad Milo! overshoots its limitations with some smart production moves. The actual monster, which Duncan treats like a dog and calls Milo, looks and acts like a low-budget mix between Chucky, E.T., and the Slitheen from Doctor Who, but the puppetry is done in a way to make the character at times gruesome, frightening, comic, and even lovable. There are times when Duncan comforts the beast to try and calm it down that provide some big laughs. The smartest move, though, is in using go-pro cameras to shows us the world in the monster’s eyes, taking us along for a very fun ride.
For a ridiculous movie with a ridiculous plot, ridiculous mythology (apparently this monster goes back to an old legend) and even more ridiculous violence, Bad Milo! manages to find a heart and soul, and that is a by-product of the exceptional acting.
No character, save maybe Duncan’s boss (Patrick Warburton) is a caricature, and we get to know everyone’s desires and personalities through some very human dialogue. Characters react to the problems Milo presents as real people would, and so we are able to become attached to them and enjoy every second of the film.
Bad Milo! seems to crack the formula for trashy B-Horror with its relatable characters, creative production and humorous delivery. It’s as gory and gross as we expect, but not in the ways we expect. Having made less than $20,000 at a limited box office, I hope this film gets the recognition it deserves through viewings on Netflix and maybe even cult status in the future. It’s a true diamond in the rough.
