366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Case Esparros

FEATURING: Hannah Weir, Gary Wilson

PLOT: A mysterious milkman helps a grieving mother deal with the loss of her child.

COMMENTS: I could give The Absence of Mil k in the Mouths of the Lost a “Beware” tag, because the average viewer will immediately want to flee during the opening scene of a cow giving birth in real time. But, if you are reading this, chances are you are not the average viewer. Instead, I’ll just remind you that when you brave Milk, you are venturing into the strange and treacherous world of microbudget DIY surrealism—so calibrate your expectations accordingly.

A milkman (when exactly is this supposed to be set?) delivers glass bottles to a house where a young woman bathes in filthy black liquid with a blank expression; she doesn’t answer the bell when he rings. The milkman lives in a dingy basement decorated with pictures of missing children cut out from milk cartons—and a breast hanging on his wall that drips white liquid into a bowl. Meanwhile, in an alternate plane of reality, mute, cigar-smoking, boxer-wearing devils covered head-to-toe in white greasepaint plot mischief against a trio of masked children. The milkman has buzzy schizophrenic hallucinations where he sees a masked woman knitting and delivering electronically altered monologues while walled in by Brakhage-style “paint-on-the-film” moving canvases. A few dramatic sequences, and much moping about the dilapidated house, advance the woman’s story, until she and the milkman finally meet for an exposition dump to tie (some of) the plot strands together. The children find it almost shockingly easy to best the middle-aged demons that beset them.

Milk clearly suffers from its low budget. The visuals often display thrift-store ingenuity, but the sound can be a serious issue: many sections were filmed without any, and there are several moments when what might be meaningful dialogue is muffled. At other times, the dialogue is both nearly inaudible and digitally altered. It’s needlessly frustrating. It’s also a pity that so much of the middle of the film has such poor sound quality, when in the opening and closing, where Esparos’ musician friends contribute songs (including a deranged cover of the gospel standard “I’ll Fly Away”), the sound mix is crucial and well-executed.

There’s a difference between having a lot of creativity on display and everything clicking. If you can focus on the former, Milk has a lot to offer. Some of the imagery is arresting: the cigar-smoking demons are as brilliantly conceived as they are easily achieved, and sequences like the woman who pierces her milk-bag bra (!) with a knife are hard to forget. And although some of the imagery is shocking, its always purposeful and empathetic. The movie has a good heart. It helps to love cows.

The Absence of Milk In the Mouths of the Lost [Blu-ray]

• Region Free Blu-Ray

Check Price