What a waste of my time!!!

Better Late Then Never

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Bad Milo! is fun film that confidently mixes a game cast (Peter Stormare is especially good) with self-consciously loopy creature antics and action. The Freudian elements give the proceedings a modicum of respectability to offset the anally-fixated dialogue, jokes and revenge hi-jinks, while Milo himself is an amusing creation. However, although the film does have some good gore-attacks by the titular creature, in addition to very amusing 'bonding' scenes between Duncan and Milo, the film would have worked better with some Frank Henenlotter-style grunge and sleaze, as Basket Case and Brain Damage seem to be the most obvious influences (barring a maniacal and proctological take on Gremlins' Gizmo, that is), but Bad Milo! never reaches that level (or should it be glorious depths?).

"Bad Milo" could easily have veered into a repulsive display of scatological humor, but instead maintained a fairly restrained tenor throughout. There have been numerous stories about evil doppelgängers, the most famous of which is undoubtedly "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." There have also been movies where the doppelgänger was apparently the personification of the male sex drive, as with "Bad Johnson," which I haven't actually seen. Giving the inner demon the appearance of some giant anthropomorphic turd with moray eel teeth, that resides in the protagonist's colon and escapes through his rectum, was a bold choice that presents some comic potential, but undoubtedly alienated many potential and actual viewers. The dramatic question here is how should one confront/acknowledge/manage ones inner demons. We all occasionally respond to people and situations with anger, jealousy and other ignoble sentiments. Should we keep these bad feelings inside, possibly engendering inner conflicts, or should we vent them and confront them candidly, or should we try to find some unrelated activity that allows us to vent our frustrations without involving those who are the proximate source? BM presents two characters with inner demons. One withdraws from society to deny his inner demons any source of inspiration or expression. The other attempts to embrace, contain, placate, then confront his demon. However, I felt the dramatic issue was not explored as thoroughly as it might have been. The demon had only one level of response, to brutally murder. But as people, our darker sides find many levels of expression, such as insulting, slighting, ignoring, ostracizing, humiliating and various levels of violence short of lethal. Simply unleashing the demon to commit murder and mayhem seems a cheap and obvious ploy. What if the demon wreaked havoc in more subtle ways? Instead of physically assaulting the guy in the alley, it might have taken a video of what was a fairly humiliating sequence of events and posted it on YouTube. It could have stolen the businessman's records and delivered them to the FBI, the press and/or his victims. While the film explores daddy issues and how the sins of the father are visited on the son and the psychological impact of growing up in a broken home that has been abandoned by the father (all of which are discussed more intelligently in Robert Brewster's review), we don't see how other characters deal with anger, frustration or jealousy. The film is much better than one would expect and worth viewing. Its consideration of the dramatic issue is narrow but deeper than it might appear at first blush. The production values were adequate and it's always nice to see a film where the cinematographer used a tripod whenever possible. Performances were generally good, if restrained. Even Stomare's performance was restrained.

Duncan (Ken Marino) is chased by some mysterious horror. Then it flashes back 123 hours. He is in the doctor's office with his wife Sarah (Gillian Jacobs) with a polyp in his colon. He hates his job and his boss Phil (Patrick Warburton) is making him fire people. He has a new therapist Highsmith (Peter Stormare). His mother Beatrice (Mary Kay Place) brings her boyfriend Bobbi (Kumail Nanjiani) and a fertility doctor to dinner. He poops out a monster which kills everyone who causes him stress. He bonds with it naming it Milo.It has some minor funny moments. Milo himself generates very few laughs. It's a little gross and very perplexing monster. I think the scene coming out in front of the therapist needs to show their connectivity more. Milo can get hurt and Duncan can get hurt in sympathy in that scene. The horror part of the movie isn't that scary. The comedy has a few good scenes. It's a B-movie that is slightly better than a butt monster ought to be.

There are things that are better left unexplained. And how could and would you be able to explain them. Now I'm not even going to go into details about the character "Milo" that is playing a major role here, although I'm sure all of you know what the movie is about and where that character "sprung" out of (no pun intended).It might be a horror, but it really has a lot of comedy in it too. The monster itself, which is not CGI (well maybe there is some CG help, but you can see that this is a "real" puppet), has its own personality. One that clashes with our main character. It drives the story and even though you will know where this is heading, you will be able to enjoy it a lot.