Film Reviews

August 28, 2026

"Buddy" isn’t your average horror movie for a few reasons: 1) It assumes its audience is smart and wants to figure things out for themselves; 2) It has moments of genuine, laugh-out-loud humor; and 3) It doesn't go for the easy slasher moments we might expect for a movie about a deranged and murderous orange unicorn. It's lean, clever, and creepy, and the filmmakers do a lot with what appears to be a little given that its reported budget was less than $3 million.

Frankly, I'm surprised it took any writer or director, in this case Casper Kelly, who penned the screenplay with Jamie King, this long to make a dark and satirical horror movie about a killer Barney the Dinosaur-like character. Barney, you'll recall, was the lovable purple Tyrannosaurus rex at the center of a PBS children's show that ran for nearly two decades. In it, the anthropomorphic Barney was a stuffed animal who came to life and delighted grade school kids through song, dance, and play, imparting on them life lessons such as sharing, using your imagination, and of course, love, ending each episode with the earworm tune, "I love you, you love me..." Barney may have been fine for kids, but he was nauseatingly maudlin and hokey for adults, and therefore ripe for parody.

That's where "Buddy" comes in, and to be fair, it isn't the first of its kind. There have been many black comedies and horror movies about beloved children's television personalities who go off the deep end and turn threatening ("Death to Smoochy," "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey," "Monkey's Magic Merry Go Round"). "Buddy" is more inventive though.

For starters, the bright, make-believe world of the "It's Buddy!" TV show, which includes the usual assortment of colorful characters in programs of this type—a diverse group of kids; a friendly mailman and nurse; other supporting animal friends; and inanimate objects such as a mailbox, backpack, and train brought to life with sassy personalities—isn't a show at all. It's an alternate plane of reality. There are no cameras, crew people, or egotistical creative types hanging around. The show exists inexplicably as its own world, where the kids, who are not actors, sing, dance, have parties, and routinely bring Buddy (voice of Keegan-Michael Key), a six-foot orange unicorn with a purple, heart-shaped belly, to life to help solve their trivial problems, all before the credits roll at the end. The idea that the film doesn't feel the need to explain the mechanics or origins of this parallel universe makes it that much more interesting and unsettling, and it shows Kelly has a lot of faith in the audience to consider its own theories.

The unanswerable questions in "Buddy”—and there are many—are what make it fun. A few burning ones I had were: How do you explain the edits in the TV show? Who is "watching" the show, i.e., from whose point of view is the camera? Do the kids sleep in between episodes? Do the kids ever grow up?

What's also mysterious, at least at the beginning, is why Buddy, seemingly so kind and jolly, suddenly turns sinister, and the movie basks in getting us to speculate on his unwholesome origins and, to put it mildly, sine wave of a personality. His rampage kicks in when a kid named Josh (Luke Speakman) refuses to participate in a dance party, which offends Buddy. Things get ugly, and the other kids, Freddy (Delaney Quinn), Wade (Caleb Williams), Oliver (Tristan Borders), and newcomer Hannah (Madison Skyy Polan), the latter of whom arrives out of nowhere, question Buddy's behavior and motivations. Is this the first time the kids have gathered in secret? Having lived in a squeaky-clean universe, are they even aware of the concept of violence? Whatever the case, the kids instinctively know that Buddy and the world they live in are not alright, and rather than wait around to become victims, they set in motion plans to escape to their confined play area and seek refuge in the neighboring Diamond City, which results in one of the movie's best payoffs.

The first half of "Buddy" centers around the resilient kids and some effectively gruesome murder scenes, but then, abruptly (yet not jarringly), the story pivots and transports us to the "real" world, our world, where a woman named Grace (Cristin Milioti, fresh off her incredible performance in HBO's "The Penguin"), also has a sinking feeling that things aren't alright. Grace, a working mom, is married to Ben (Topher Grace), and they have two sons (Seamus Flynn, Bryson JonSteele). As a family, they're happy enough, but one day, Grace stares blankly at a particular object and realizes something is missing. What's more is she suddenly sees "It's Buddy!" on TV, even though no one else can, which is bizarre. Perhaps the psychic Grace (played with droll wit by Brooke Bloom) can shed some light on what's happening.

More about the plot shouldn't be revealed, because it's the surprises in "Buddy" that make it stand out. What I can say is that "Buddy" becomes a real gem, an unexpected, mind-altering adventure of sorts that's equally funny, eerie, grisly, intriguing, and even emotional. Kelly knows how absurd this premise is, but he and his team lean into the outlandishness and own it. The result is a comedic horror thriller that's impressively tight, well-rounded, and gleefully and morbidly entertaining. It's rare when a horror movie is able to be so disquieting, solemn, and comical at the same time (I haven't even mentioned Clint Howard and Michael Shannon in their supporting roles as a secluded cowboy and marionette, respectively), and to not have any of its disparate qualities overshadow or undermine the other is a testament to how much the filmmakers and cast believe in all aspects of the ludicrous material, which they realize through inventive storytelling and dedicated performances, leaving us in a strange state of amusement, disturbance, and curious thoughts.