Bad Milo! (2013)

This movie was featured in the weekend programme some time ago, with a picture of the protagonist with his arm around Milo, and I thought, "looks cute".

See? Cute.

It's about a guy who has bowel problems exacerbated by stress, so when he’s really stressed out he has to go take a big dump. After receiving a call from office saying that all of his work files get deleted by an incompetent colleague, he passes out in the bathroom, and wakes up next morning to find that said colleague is dead, mauled to death. Seeking help from a witch doctortherapist, he finds out that a demon has grown in his stomach, and whenever stressed, the demon will be shat out and it will go kill the source of his stress.

Does this demon stay out, you ask? No, he goes back in the same way.

It's a comedy. And a rather unique horror-comedy, at that. The only instance I can recall a monster coming out of someone’s butt is in Dreamcatcher, which kind of sucked.

Ken Marino is perfect as our hapless hero who has daddy issues (there’s a neat development in the movie but I won’t spoil it) and gets bullied by his boss because of his toilet problem. There’s also this simply adorable sequence where he tries to bond with his stomach demon (naming him ‘Milo’), and even tries to feed him with canned food.

The supporting cast is made up of a surprising number of people that I know, considering this is a movie I’ve not heard of. Gillian Jacobs, Peter Stormare (he’s the witch doctor!), Patrick Warburton, Jimmy JamesStephen Root, that Indian dude from Franklin and Bash Kunal Nayyar. It didn’t hurt the movie to have them in it; quite the opposite.

[Especially Pete Stormare. Always a plus point.]

Bad Milo! is one of those movies that you watch and readily laugh at, despite the morbid topic (the thought of Milo going back in and up is enough to make my butt curl), because funnily, toilet humour never gets old.