There is something inherently unsettling about the overly cheerful world of children’s television. The colorful sets, catchy songs, talking objects and giant costumed characters are designed to make kids feel safe. Buddy takes all of that childhood comfort, twists it into something deeply disturbing and somehow manages to make the result as funny as it is horrifying.
Directed by Casper Kelly, the filmmaker behind the cult Adult Swim short Too Many Cooks, Buddy is exactly the kind of horror comedy that could have fallen apart almost immediately. A murderous orange unicorn from a 1990s-style children’s television show sounds like a great five-minute joke. Stretching that premise into a feature film is another story.
Somehow, Kelly makes it work.
The movie introduces audiences to It’s Buddy!, an impossibly upbeat children’s program hosted by Buddy, a towering orange unicorn voiced by Keegan-Michael Key. Buddy sings, dances and teaches his young friends important lessons, all while surrounded by the type of talking furniture, puppets and colorful characters that would have felt perfectly at home on television three decades ago.
Then one of the children stops playing along.
That is when Buddy begins revealing what kind of movie it really is.
Buddy [credit: BoulderLight Pictures]
As Buddy’s cheerful personality becomes increasingly threatening, Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and the other children begin questioning the world around them. Their attempt to escape Buddy’s increasingly dangerous playground eventually leads beyond the familiar television set and into a much stranger world.
Meanwhile, Cristin Milioti plays Grace, a mother in the real world who begins experiencing the disturbing feeling that someone is missing from her life, even though she cannot quite understand who that person might be.
It would be easy for Buddy to rely entirely on the joke of turning a Barney-like children’s character into a killer. Instead, Kelly keeps expanding the idea. The movie jumps between the television program, the outside world and increasingly bizarre environments that make it feel as though audiences are slowly discovering just how large Buddy’s nightmare actually is.
The production design is a huge part of why it works. It’s Buddy! genuinely looks like something pulled from a VHS tape sitting in a box since 1997. The cheap-looking sets, overly enthusiastic songs, goofy characters and dated television production aren’t merely background details. They are essential to the movie’s personality.
And once the violence begins, that artificial happiness makes everything happening on screen considerably more disturbing.
Keegan-Michael Key is particularly effective as Buddy. He never needs to completely abandon the character’s upbeat children’s-host personality to become frightening. In fact, Buddy is often at his creepiest when he is desperately trying to maintain that smile and convince everyone that they are still having fun.
Buddy [credit: BoulderLight Pictures]
The supporting cast is equally game for the insanity. Patton Oswalt voices a talking backpack named Strappy, while Michael Shannon appears as the cowboy puppet Willie. Topher Grace also stars alongside Milioti, but it is young Delaney Quinn who gives the movie much of its heart as Freddy.
Most importantly, Buddy understands exactly what kind of movie it wants to be.
This is not restrained horror. It is strange, bloody, absurd and intentionally ridiculous. Kelly throws children’s television, slasher horror, dark comedy and surrealism into the same blender and rarely seems interested in asking whether he has gone too far.
Buddy [credit: BoulderLight Pictures]
That commitment is what makes the movie so much fun.
Not every gag lands, and there are moments when Buddy threatens to stretch its central joke beyond its limits. But whenever the movie begins feeling comfortable, Kelly usually introduces another bizarre character, disturbing revelation or wonderfully ridiculous piece of violence to pull audiences back into Buddy’s world.
There is also something surprisingly effective underneath all the blood and comedy. Buddy plays with the strange relationship adults have with the television shows they loved as children. Looking back, some of those programs were genuinely bizarre. Giant creatures demanded participation, characters stared directly into the camera waiting for children to answer them and everyone repeatedly insisted that viewers were their friends.
Buddy simply asks what happens when one of those characters actually means it.
The answer is one of the strangest horror comedies of the year.
Buddy isn’t interested in reinventing horror. It just takes an incredibly fun idea and commits to it with enough creativity, nostalgia and unapologetic weirdness to make the whole thing work.
You may never look at a friendly children’s television mascot quite the same way again.
