2024 is already becoming something of a banner year for horror, with Longlegs making over $100m and Late Night with the Devil earning a whopping 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And yet the breakout horror of the year might just be an $800 project currently available to watch free on YouTube.

Milk & Serial is a 62-minute, found-footage horror by YouTuber Curry Barker, and it manages to be at once ruthlessly effective and wonderfully authentic. Racking up 348,000 views in the two weeks since its release, its popularity has been supercharged by raves on Reddit that have since crossed over into traditional media. Bloody Disgusting called it “one of the year’s best-kept secrets” and this week Barker found himself being interviewed by no less than Variety.

Part of the reason for this is that it’s just a good story. Milk & Serial’s credits list Barker as the film’s writer, director, producer, editor, cinematographer, composer and star. Additionally, the $800 budget was primarily spent on hiring an actor and buying a camera (which was then sold for a $100 profit, pushing the production closer to the black). It’s the sort of rags-to-riches story that Hollywood loves, not least because the film is likely to represent an enormous return on investment.

But more than that, it’s just a very good film. Milk & Serial follows a pair of insufferable YouTube pranksters as they attempt to torment each other for clicks. But, without giving too much away, everything goes wrong when one of the pair reveals that their capacity for torment wildly outstrips that of their partner. It’s a grisly, creepy, fat-free hour; deliberately grungy and horribly believable.

Of course, it helps that the subject of the film is ripe for the picking. There’s a vast subsection of YouTube exclusively given over to tedious prank videos, where groups of friends trapped in arrested development spend inordinate amounts of time and money making each other’s lives as much of a misery as possible, and then honking with glee about it.

Watching these videos is like watching a joyless, charmless version of Jackass that seems to double as a psychopathy manual. There’s a chilling pathology to them, coupled with a compulsion to record everything on camera, to maximise all potential content. Milk & Serial pushes this pathology to its logical endpoint by dousing it in blood, but it keeps the core motivation intact.

And, for the most part, it feels real too. There’s a lack of precision in the photography, a carelessness in the staging and a blunt-knife butchery approach to editing that’s becoming the hallmark of prank videos like these, as if the creators are scared to slow the nonstop churn of their output by putting time into basic things like care.

It makes sense for Milk & Serial to be a found footage film, too. Increasingly, that’s where horror goes to exploit a new form. Blair Witch did it with videocameras, Paranormal Activity did it with home security cameras. Rob Savage’s Host was supremely quick off the mark when it came to pandemic-era video chats. And so it is with Curry Barker, and the endless self-absorption of the YouTube set.

As a film it’s great. There are some incredibly neatly observed moments, such as when the main character describes gaslighting as “when you prank somebody but make them think it’s their fault”. Plus, even though the casting seems to be pulled from Barker’s own social circle, each character appears to be written to everyone’s individual strengths.

However, as a calling card, you sense that Milk & Serial is going to be unbeatable. Curry Barker has announced himself as a film-maker to contend with, and he’s done it in the smartest way possible. The film is likely to live for free on YouTube forever. He doesn’t have to schlep it around the festivals, or break his back pushing for distribution. It’s there, and it’s proof that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Bigger names are already coming for Barker. According to Variety he’s already working with the Fall producer James Harris on his next movie – telling the publication that “I’ve never had a budget in my life” – and depending on how that goes, this could be the start of a glittering career.

Or maybe it won’t. With Milk & Serial, Barker has proved that he’s able to turn out deft, compelling horror movies – and run a profit on them – by delivering them straight to audiences for free. That seems to be the choice he’s faced with now. Does he become part of Hollywood, or does he help to kill it?