Debut 'Milk'
Santiago Menghini’s Milk is the near-perfect culmination of less being more. Using one location, two core actors, effective sound design, and suspenseful cinematography, he ropes you into a rabbit hole of a sinister plot.
The film starts with a wide establishing shot of a suburban house late at night. We see a light turn on inside the house and we cut to the title card. This is the only exterior filming used for the film. The remainder in its entirety takes place inside the house. We follow a young boy who arrives in the kitchen to have some milk. Right away, two things are made apparent to the audience: the first and most prominent being the shadow of a woman standing in the background beyond the unaware boy. The second and less noticeable is the missing children stamped on the side of the milk carton. This missing children poster adds a layer of fear and suspicion but can quickly be overlooked with the daunting shadow looming in the background. These shadows and contrast of light and dark heavily contribute to the captivating cinematography as well as the overarching themes.
The shadow is quick to reveal itself as the boy’s mother. She smokes with an empty glass nested beside a whiskey bottle on the table behind her. She scolds the boy for drinking the milk from the carton and doesn’t bother to turn back and look at him. She simply stares off into the rainy night. Our suspicion grows as the boy takes notice that his mother has mud all over her bare feet. She tells him not to go outside and he questions if she has. He is met with silence. As the boy takes his leave, he rounds the corner and hears his mother’s voice call to him from down the hall. This in particular is an excellent sound design. It is clear and simple for the audience to comprehend that the voice did not come from the same room and direction as his mother he just saw and spoke with in the kitchen. It clearly came from the direction the boy was walking toward.
To confirm the boy’s paranoia, we see him look back and see that the mother he just spoke to is still standing by the window near the kitchen. He then hears the voice call out to him again. Very clearly, it is from the hall ahead of him. He turns to see the light turning on in the hall, further signifying his mother is now calling to him from further in the house. He looks back once more in the kitchen and sees the woman from the window has turned to face him. She questions if he heard the voice.
The boy is completely turned around. The music heightens the suspense. It is impossible to determine who truly the boy’s mother is: the voice in the hall or the mother with mud feet standing in front of him. The mother with mud feet warns him to listen to her and come to her. She says that she is his mother. At this moment, the door in the hall opens. We now hear approaching footsteps. Once again, the sound design beautifully expresses dread as these nearing footsteps are paired with a very comforting mother’s calling to the boy.
Down the hall, deep in the shadows, we can see a pair of golden eyes staring back at us. This is, in my personal opinion, where the film fails to master its suspense. Out from the shadows, comes what the director has dubbed the “dark mother.” She is a grotesque woman that seems very cheerful to see the boy. The other mother has held him extremely still in a sort of maternal cradle and forces him to face the “dark mother.” The film ends with the boy dropping his glass of milk and completely vanishing. Now this is where the themes are present in clarity: the contrast of the mothers. One stands in the light and wears white, the other hides in the shadows and darkness. The cinematography has been teasing this since the beginning. Even the glass of milk turns into a sickening black substance upon the “dark mother’s” arrival.
The reveal of the “dark mother” is not very intimidating. She’s slow and mushy from head to toe. The fear of the unknown truly formed the backbone for the short film. After seeing her true form, I was left underwhelmed by the visual effects and prosthetics because it drew away from the film’s less-is-more approach. A monster with this kind of detail didn’t feel fitting in a world of grounded reality that Milk has done well to weave for the audience. Shadows are always bigger when we don’t shine light on them.
Despite a disappointing reveal, the film is beautifully haunting and never misses a beat in its pace. A strong recommend with the Halloween season wrapping up.
