DANCES WITH FILMS 2026 REVIEW! Captain Milo is a story of a child whose parents are there but not there. Milo (Austin Thomas) is ten years old and alone in a hotel room while his parent is away. He makes the best of it by spending all day at the hotel pool, splashing around and trying to get in on games with the other kids, who ignore him. When the pool lights go out, and everyone else clears out, Milo is still there, the last one in the water. He eventually heads back to his room to figure out what to do next.
What he does is disappear into his comic books. Milo has a beloved superhero, and he starts acting out scenes, flying off the furniture, soaring through fantasies where he’s the one with all the power. At some point, his phone buzzes: his parent won’t be home that night. As the hours pass, the line between Milo’s fantasy and reality begins to blur.
Milo lies on a hotel bed surrounded by action figures and toy soldiers in Captain Milo.
“When the pool lights go out and everyone else clears out, Milo is still there, the last one in the water.”
This is the third film in a trilogy that filmmaker Darcy Miller has built around children dealing with a missing parent — the first covered accidental death, the second a parent’s suicide. Miller grew up with a mentally ill father and mother, and that experience is all over this film. She’s drawn to a specific kind of trauma: not abuse, not violence, but emotional neglect. Here, Milo is forced to cope with loneliness.
What’s impressive is that ten-year-old Austin Thomas carries every single frame of this film by himself. His entire performance is in his facial expressions and body language. It’s subtle and authentic, never big to show he’s “acting.” You feel the weight of Milo’s loneliness through every frame of Austin Thomas’s performance. What a spectacular actor. Captain Milo is only twelve minutes long, and it earns every one of them.
Captain Milo screened at the 2026 Dances with Films.
"…not abuse, not violence, but emotional neglect."
