‘I hate Buddy, yes I do!’ | ‘Buddy’ review
Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions
The next installment in a summer of independent horror successes, “Buddy,” hits movie theaters following its 2026 Sundance Film Festival premiere. “Buddy”’s darkly comedic elements hit an untapped well of cinematic potential. But, the movie’s insistence on deploying one-liners and cheap tricks might be less “comedic relief” and more “comedic distraction” from any genuine scares or deeper meaning.
The story follows the oblivious child Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and her friends stuck in a ‘90s kids’ television set with a maniacal unicorn mascot (Keegan-Michael Key). It reaches an audience with an appetite whetted by the surrealist production design of “Backrooms” and the allegorical backbone of “Obsession.”
Buddy comes to audiences by way of Casper Kelly, creator of “Too Many Cooks” and “Yule Log.” The surreal dark comedy episodes were programmed on Adult Swim alongside other similarly off-kilter shorts disguised as Infomercials. Now, Kelly points his twisted lens towards ‘90s children's television programming in a heavy-handed homage to “Barney & Friends,” including theme song lyrics: “I love Buddy, yes I do!” After establishing mastery over quarter-hour television structure, banking on shock value and thriving off ambiguity, Kelly takes a cold plunge into feature film territory. When faced with a runtime past the typical confines of a 20-minute span, Kelly struggles to find the right footing to fully explore the movie’s darkest concepts.
As the movie progresses, the trapped child stars go from clueless to terrified as they realize their unicorn companion isn’t as friendly as promised in his theme song. The adult’s obliviousness to the situation only escalates their hopelessness, and they find themselves entirely defenseless to their boss’s demands of participation. Buddy is a thinly veiled metaphor for the exploitation of child actors in the television industry — a fairly heavy concept to twist into a dark comedy.
After the initial shock, the movie’s joke quota runs the movie into a rut. The plot wanders with Freddy and her friends through a desert landscape, as they realize they can do things like say “titty” and take psychedelic drugs. As the allegory continues, we are introduced to characters representing “washed-up child stars” that share a homosexual kiss played for a cheap laugh. The depth of the relationships between the children is also questionable, as Freddy repeatedly values animate objects like Strappy the Backpack over her fellow human friends. These “characters” are used to propel the plot forward in a series of empathy shortcuts, but it gets difficult to sympathize with a talking mailbox when children are dying left and right.
While the packed theater had its fair share of good laughs, it came at the cost of the emotional moments and horror payoffs. At best, the comedy derailed any potential building tension, and at worst, it made light of industry-perpetuated child exploitation.
Perhaps the best aspect of Buddy is the compelling set design that accurately recreates a ‘90s television set with bright colors and larger-than-life set pieces. Its commitment to the visual aesthetic is likely to fill movie theater seats with a nostalgic young adult demographic. The setting of the final beat gives a brief glimpse into the lore behind the Buddy show that is sure to get Redditors theorizing on its purpose and place in reality. But leaving the context of the show almost entirely unexplained allows the eerie tone of Buddy’s world to go mostly untouched…except for the 15 minutes spent in the real world.
The real world outside of the television set introduces us to Grace (Cristin Milioti), whose home life is derailed by memories of her non-existent child. The movie undoubtedly needed a secondary plot to drive the story, and Milioti’s performance breathes life into a very interesting psychological horror premise. But since the isolated atmosphere of Buddy’s world is perfectly crafted to support the children’s fears of invisibility, even a brief glimpse into the outside world compromises some of the inexplicable, surreal horror of the world’s existence.
Ultimately, “Buddy” brings a creatively sinister bend to a familiar genre, but its writer’s compulsions towards comedy rob the weight from the story’s heavier moments. The result creates a funny and visually stimulating watch, but fails to scratch the surface of the story’s dense implications. Perhaps “Buddy” would’ve been better if it was crammed into Adult Swim’s 3:00 a.m. programming.
