Bad Milo (2013)

Author: Brett Gallman
Submitted by: Brett Gallman   Date : 2015-01-15 04:16
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Written by: Benjamin Hayes, Jacob Vaughan
Directed by: Jacob Vaughan
Starring: Ken Marino, Gillian Jacobs, and Peter Stormare

Reviewed by: Brett Gallman





Embrace your inner demon.


I’m starting to wonder if I’ve lost the stomach to be a horror fan. I don’t mean to say the genre has grown too dull or too gross—it’s just that I find myself to be more squeamish lately. Maybe it has something to do with being on the other side of 30 (related: Phil Nobile has some excellent thoughts on this), and it’s just not as cool to watch bodily trauma anymore since it feels more and more like an inevitability. Even something like Bad Milo—which is a total tongue-in-cheek romp about a demonic digestive tract—has me squirming these days. When horror-comedies start doing this, you begin to wonder. Then again, it could just be that I have a personal aversion to butt stuff, and I probably have cringed at Bad Milo at any age. I probably would have made a shitty proctologist is what I’m saying.

Bad Milo opens in an uncomfortable place (discomfort is one of its motifs): the doctor’s office, where Duncan (Ken Marino) and his wife Sarah (Gillian Jacobs) are attempting to get to the bottom of the former’s digestive problems. It turns out that Ken is a tight-ass, both literally and figuratively speaking. Going to the bathroom is difficult because he’s perpetually stressed out, and it’s resulted in a polyp, which Duncan’s doctor cheerfully points out via rectal cam footage (meanwhile, my face is, like, ghost white at this point). Life doesn’t get much easier for Duncan: Sarah is ready to start a baby, his step-father (Kumail Nanjiani) is a dick, his biological father (Stephen Root) remains estranged, and his boss (Patrick Warburton) has just demoted him to a low-grade position stationed in a renovated bathroom. When it all becomes too much, Duncan’s ass produces an honest-to-god gremlin that serves as an extension of his psyche.

Despite his psychologist’s (a suitably kooky Peter Stormare!) assessment that it’s all metaphorical, it decidedly is not: when conjured up (er, out?), this demon has the capacity to exact revenge on anyone who has ever wronged Duncan. And be conveniently mistaken for a rabid raccoon, according to the news reports that follow each rampage. As Ranier Wolfcastle might say, “that’s the joke” of Bad Milo: Ken Marino has a butt goblin that does his gory bidding. It’s the latest in a rich crop of recent movies looking to coast on an absurd premise by hammering on one silly note; the difference here, at least, is that its firmly committed to its characters and concept. In lesser (read: Syfy, The Asylum) hands, Bad Milo is titled Ass Demon and premieres on a Saturday night, readymade for ironic viewings and Twitter snark.

In director Jacob Vaughan’s hands, it’s a surprisingly sweet little movie. Duncan’s demon—which is dubbed Milo—has a mean streak that isn’t inherent; it’s just that he often finds himself acting as a repressed id. When he’s not feeding on anyone who annoys the hell out of Duncan, he coos and giggles, sort of like Gizmo. Milo’s brought to life with some wonderful animatronics that will further recall the glory days of practical effects, and it goes a long way in making him an endearing and indelible creature. He is, of course, a metaphor after all, not only for Duncan’s latent, violent tendencies, but also for his masculine and paternal anxieties. Milo is a projection for whatever fears Duncan obviously harbors about parenthood, and there’s a stretch of the film that plays like Eraserhead if it were re-imagined by Troma.

Other stretches just play out like straight-up Troma, albeit on a budget that Lloyd Kaufman has rarely been able to afford. Bad Milo is about as gross as its premise entails, as stomach gremlins don’t exactly devour their victims in a mannerly fashion. Blood, guts, and fecal matter are sprayed about quite abundantly, and there’s an ample amount of uncomfortable discussions about colonoscopies and the logistics of Duncan’s ability to squeeze Milo back up his butt when he’s through. Thankfully, we’re spared visual conformation, so we just have to go with it. Which is exactly what Vaughan and company do anyway: this isn’t one of those films that’s constantly winking and elbowing you in the guts to point out how outlandish or crazy it is. Everyone mostly shrugs at the revelation of this little shit-critter, which is probably funnier. Well, it's definitely funnier when Duncan’s mom (Mary Kay Place) confirms that she suspected its existence all along.

Some other, similarly understated moments also had me chuckling, but I don’t know that I ever laughed out loud or even continuously giggled. Considering the cast, that’s sort of surprising because this really is an all-star assemblage of under-appreciated talent, starting at the top with Marino. He quite effectively plays against type—typically, he’s the outrageous asshole in a film like this, but he proves be pretty apt at taking on a more deadpan, milquetoast persona. Duncan has to be a sympathetic character for Bad Milo to succeed at all, and Marino shoulders that with ease.

Most of the surrounding cast gets its moment or two as well, with most of the humor deriving from the clash of personalities. Nanjiani and Marino have an especially humorous bit at the dinner table, while Warburton is working his typical meathead gimmick in a role of the super-dick boss. Stormare is an eternal delight regardless of his roles, but he’s having an especially good time here, where he just throws himself right into the film’s oddness. Appropriately, Root helps to form the film’s sweet center. He’s playing a deadbeat dad, but he’s not beyond redemption because Root does the “cranky old man with a heart of gold” pretty well. Most disappointing, however, is how the film nearly wastes Gillian Jacobs completely. The script gives her some nice opportunities to do some subtle work at the beginning, but she practically disappears until the climax, where she becomes the wife-in-peril. Having been a fan of Jacobs’s work on Community for several years now (she is seriously one of the funniest people on the planet) I had hoped to see her really shine here; it’s too bad she was never given much of a chance.

Otherwise, Bad Milo more or less does its concept justice, even if it’s not as outrageously funny as expected. You can sense a little bit of early Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson in it, though: there’s a scene with Milo terrorizing someone in a basement that feels obviously inspired by The Evil Dead, and it carries itself with the same sort of reckless, blood-spattered abandon as something like Dead Alive. Vaughan has a good feel for the manic, off-kilter energy required for something like Bad Milo, which is a better horror film than it is a comedy. It even looks the part by eschewing the typically flat, over-lit compositions of the latter in favor of a layer of grit, dark shadows, and frenzied camerawork. Really, it’s sort of the heir-apparent to the screwy allegories of Frank Henenlotter, but, again, it skews more towards the sweet side. Surprisingly, Bad Milo is just about family in the end. Rent it!



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