Review by Tristan Bishop
I bet you’ve never really considered having a demon living up your arse, have you? Or if you have, your thinking probably went along the lines of ‘I really don’t fancy having a demon living up my arse’. Well, it’s a tough concept to sell, I’ll admit it, but Bad Milo gives it a try.
Ken Marino plays Duncan. Duncan has work stress, as he has been yanked from his accountancy position to join the Human Resources team, which in reality means he’ll be in charge of making his fellow workers redundant. He is taken from his desk and moved into his new ‘office’ – previously a bathroom and still containing the toilets – which he has to share with another colleague. As well as this he has a deadbeat father who took off when he was a child, a mother who, along with her new, much younger, boyfriend, isn’t afraid of being a tad over-sharing at the dinner table, and a wife who wants to start a family. When his mother invites a surprise guest for dinner, who turns out to be a fertility doctor who suggests he examine Duncan there and then, the stress gets a little too much…
Duncan’s stress manifests itself in a fairly common way at first – through his gut. Cue comically loud farting and straining effects, and the poor chap sending hours at a time in the bathroom. However, this time, Duncan passes out (from effort!) and something comes out, ensuring the fertility doctor meets a sticky and bloody end, and manages to get back ‘in’ without Duncan realising.
Eventually he agrees to see a psychiatrist (a brilliantly loopy role for Peter Stomare), and together they hit upon the unlikely truth – That Duncan is in fact playing host to a demon. One who lives in his colon and has started coming out to dispatch those who cause Duncan stress. Can Duncan control the creature before it slaughters everyone close to him? Does the answer lie with his estranged father? Well, I’m not telling.
It’s probably no surprise that Bad Milo is far more a comedy than a horror film – although to those of us who suffer from stomach problems, the pain will feel very real – and one which harks back to the 80’s cycle of mini-monster films (Gremlins, Ghoulies, Munchies etc), but, rather surprisingly, despite the gross-out nature of much of the humour, Bad Milo has real heart (and some very sharp teeth). This is in part achieved by the script, which is sharp and amusing, but also the fine comic performances of Marino and especially Stomare, who steals the show completely as the unconventional shrink. The other trump that Bad Milo has up its sleeve is Milo himself – a pleasingly old-school puppet creation, who, despite a propensity for chewing off penises, is utterly adorable, speaks gibberish and generally behaves like an unruly toddler (albeit a very very dangerous one), and scenes, including those with Marino bonding with Milo, who is basically Duncan’s stress personified, have a heart-warming quality that achieves in the viewer what all the greatest movie monsters inspire – sympathy.
Abertoir Festival 2013 pulled out a trump (pun very much intended) card with the UK premiere of Bad Milo, and it seemed to go down a storm with the audience, who were as won over by the cuter antics of the anal-dwelling beast as they were by the copious gore and gruesome laughs. As for myself, a long-time sufferer of stomach issues with similar family estrangement issues, I found it profoundly moving, and I’ll admit I could feel my tear ducts tingling on more than one occasion. I’ll accept that the average BAH reader might not be a giant wuss like me when it comes to such things, but there’s plenty to appeal to everyone here – even that rarest of occurrences in modern horror, a message. And, let’s face it, any film that makes you believe that harbouring a toothy deranged demon in your innermost sanctum might be a nice idea is worth 85 minutes of anyone’s time.