Children’s television has always been a little creepy. The dead-eyed puppets, the adults smiling hard enough to crack their faces, the songs engineered to burrow into a kid’s skull and live there rent-free—it was only a matter of time before somebody stopped pretending this shit was wholesome. With Buddy, director Casper Kelly takes the artificial sunshine of ’90s children’s programming, smears it with blood, and asks a wonderfully rotten question: What if the cuddly bastard demanding that everybody sing along could actually punish the kids who refused?
Inside the candy-colored prison of It’s Buddy!, an orange unicorn named Buddy teaches lessons, leads songs, and spreads happiness with the exhausting enthusiasm of a mascot that has never heard the word “no.” The children surrounding him perform their assigned roles until one of them refuses to cooperate and promptly disappears. With the painted scenery beginning to crack around them, Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and the remaining kids set out for the mysterious Diamond City while Buddy’s grin tightens, his teeth grind, and his educational kingdom turns into a slaughterhouse. Somewhere outside this televised nightmare, Grace (Cristin Milioti) senses that something has been torn from her life, even if she cannot quite remember what—or who—it was.
Kelly, the wonderfully damaged mind behind Too Many Cooks, understands that the funniest thing about children’s television is also the most frightening: its absolute refusal to acknowledge reality. Someone can vanish, a puppet can threaten murder, and the music still starts on cue. Buddy remains relentlessly cheerful even when the situation becomes horrific, and Keegan-Michael Key voices him with exactly the right mixture of warmth, desperation, and barely restrained fury. He does not sound like a monster pretending to love children; he sounds like an entertainer who genuinely loves them—as long as they smile, obey, and never attempt to leave.
That distinction gives Buddy more bite than its “Barney becomes a serial killer” premise initially suggests. This is mascot horror with something going on behind its oversized plastic eyes, digging into authority, childhood conditioning, buried trauma, and the quiet terror of realizing that the adults and institutions promising safety might only want compliance. The production design is a deranged triumph of felt, plywood, primary colors, and television garbage, while Michael Shannon and Patton Oswalt add their voices to a collection of characters that feel as if they were dragged from a condemned public-access studio and left to rot beneath the stage.
The film occasionally stuffs too many toys into its box, however, and its shift between the children’s program, Grace’s fractured reality, and the larger fantasy adventure can weaken the beautifully suffocating simplicity of its opening. Once Buddy begins explaining and expanding its world, some of that early what-the-hell-am-I-watching electricity escapes. Cristin Milioti gives the real-world material emotional weight, but the film is at its most dangerous whenever it traps us beneath those hot studio lights with the children, the puppets, and an increasingly unstable unicorn who cannot understand why anyone would want the show to end.
Still, Buddy is too strange, sincere, and gleefully vicious to dismiss as another cheap childhood icon corrupted for easy gore. Beneath all the fuzzy costumes and arterial spray is a surprisingly wounded film about memory, obedience, and the things children do to survive adults who insist they are only trying to make them happy. Kelly does not simply murder our nostalgia; he straps it into a chair, blasts the theme song, and forces it to keep smiling while the clubhouse burns.
Turns out Buddy really does love you. That’s the fucking problem.
MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 95 mins
Director: Casper Kelly
Writer: Casper Kelly
Cast: Cristin Milioti; Delaney Quinn; Topher Grace
Genre: Horror | Dark Comedy
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote:
Distributor: Roadside Attractions
Official Site:
Release Date: August 28, 2026
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: A brave girl and her friends must escape a kids television show.
