If you had to find a link between Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Rose Armitage in Get Out, and Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, you’d probably just say they were all villains.
But cinephiles and dairy farmers alike might have noticed something different ― all of them drink milk at some point in their movies.
Even though I’m from Ireland, where major fast-food outlets allow you to order milk to your home, I still have to admit there’s something creepy about an adult slowly sipping on a glass of dairy.
But why does it feel so spooky? And how come studios keep using the trope?
It can contrast youth and purity with evil
Like the horror movie trope of hearing a jewellery box jingle or seeing a little girl in plaits before something terrible happens, a movie villain drinking wholesome, childlike milk might make their deeds look even more dire by contrast.
Speaking to IMDb, actor Anthony Starr (who plays milk-chugging villain Homelander on The Boys) said his character’s lactose fascination “started with a rivalry with a baby breastfeeding.”
“It was this jealous Odeipal thing,” he explained.
In A Clockwork Orange, Alex and his crew chug drugged milk that flows from a nude mannequin’s breast before embarking on a crime spree.
Rather than being nourished by a mother’s milk, they’re poisoned by a not-quite-human woman’s “Milk Plus.”
That’ll read as pretty creepy for most people if you ask us.
Anything else?
Individual cases aside, there’s the fact that the milk-drinking villain has, by now, become a trope.
With so many instances of milk-moustachioed bad guys on the big and small screen, some movie makers may have simply started using the image as a shorthand for evil.
After shooting his first The Boys milk scene, Anthony Starr said he emailed showrunner Eric Kipke to say “We’ve got to do more milk.”
Apparently, Kipke replied, “Way ahead of you. I’m writing milk into everything from here on.”