Bad Milo!
Dir: Jacob Vaughan
2013
****
Bad Milo! is the story of a man who discovers that his sub-conscious and all the things he'd like to secretly do have manifested into a fleshy demon that lives in his colon. Said Demon has given him terrible tummy and toilet problems over the years and when life suddenly gets that little bit tougher, it decides to exit through his bottom and goes on a vengeful killing spree. Sounds like the stuff of bad-taste horror legend but it really isn't. Okay, so it is reminiscent of Troma's films, How to get ahead in Advertising and the Basketcase films as well as the films by Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon in many respects but with more mainstream comedy. One of the initial films I couldn't help but compare it to was Eraserhead. Hear me out. Eraserhead was a film about Male paranoia, Bad Milo is a film about Male paranoia on steroids. As a horror fan and a fan of puppetry, I enjoyed the scenes with Milo in them and I liked the impromptu comedy but it was the realisation of the modern man's insecurities that I really connected with. Eraserhead explored this successfully with surrealism, the hugely underrated God Bless America explored it with violence and now Bad Milo! does it horror. It's not the first horror to do this though, far from it but it is probably the most successful and distinct that I can think of in resent years. There are two ways of looking at this film, to pass it off as a trashy sick horror is to overlook something very clever. Seriously, do you want to see another slow drama about another characterless guy dealing with his father issues or do you want to see said mans anger along with his fathers anxiety, manifest themselves into demons, jump out of each others bums and fight it out until the death? Absolutely you do!