'Buddy' review: When childhood comfort becomes nightmare fuel
- Nate Adams
- 47 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Courtesy of Roadside Attractions/Saban
Imagine Barney as a sociopathic killer with an insatiable thirst for blood and you have something resembling the pitch for Casper Kelly’s inventive horror satire “Buddy,” in which a furry orange unicorn from the children’s television show “It’s Buddy” starts doing some decidedly unfriendly things. The letter of the day is B, and in this case, B is for blood.
Yet Kelly’s feature directing debut has more on its mind than simply turning a cuddly children’s mascot into a homicidal maniac. “Buddy” explores the strange, almost subliminal power behind the colorful imagery beaming out of our television sets, specifically the kind of programming that could completely consume a kid’s attention. Modeled after a variety of nineties children’s shows, Kelly understands exactly how to replicate the grainy VHS aesthetic of the era without making the movie feel like an empty nostalgia exercise. “It’s Buddy” follows its titular unicorn as he sings catchy jingles and leads a quartet of kiddos through adventures alongside friendly adults like a nurse and mailman, as well as an assortment of lovable anthropomorphized animals and objects, including a mailbox and a train, all contained within his fenced-in clubhouse.
The young cast beams with the plucky enthusiasm of kids conditioned to treat every problem as the setup for another song, but even they begin to realize something is off after discovering one of their peers’ books bloodied and discarded in the trash. When they press Buddy about it, he shrugs the whole thing off as a giant misunderstanding. Kelly is smart about slowly laying the foundation for Buddy’s eventual malice, allowing the implications of what he’s doing to become disturbing before actually showing his hand. There is something genuinely intimidating about watching a character designed to make children feel safe use that same exaggerated friendliness to keep them under his control. Played inside the suit by Sergey Zhuravsky and voiced by Michigan’s own Keegan-Michael Key, Buddy maintains the cadence of an overeager children’s television host even as his behavior becomes increasingly sinister. Key is especially good at twisting that cheerfulness into something resembling an abusive authority figure, someone capable of disguising threats and manipulation beneath a smile and a catchy song.
Most of the film revolves around the plucky heroics of young Delaney Quinn’s Freddy, who, in an effort to escape Buddy’s clutches, leads a crew of kiddos on a journey toward the hopeful sanctuary of Diamond City. Quinn makes for a smart and resourceful final girl, playing into the daffiness of the material while gradually coming to terms with the disturbing reality of a universe she had never thought to question. This has always been Buddy’s world, complete with its own rules, geography and morality, and Freddy’s awakening comes from realizing that everything she has been taught to accept as normal might actually be designed to keep her obedient.
Meanwhile, “Buddy” shifts gears to introduce Cristin Milioti’s Grace, who startles her husband Ben (Topher Grace) during dinner when she suddenly screams bloody murder at an empty chair. Grace is plagued by visions, anxiety and the nagging sense that something incredibly important has disappeared from her life, even though she cannot quite articulate what it is. Her search for answers eventually pulls the film away from its relatively grounded domestic drama and toward the supernatural world Buddy has created, slowly closing the distance between two storylines that initially seem to have almost nothing to do with one another.
Along the way, Freddy and her fellow escapees encounter an increasingly bizarre collection of characters and situations, including a coked-up ventriloquist played by Clint Howard and his puppet, voiced by Michael Shannon, as well as a lotus flower-induced acid trip that pushes the movie even further into surreal territory. One of Kelly’s more clever ideas is that the farther the kids travel from Buddy’s playground, the naughtier they become, as though escaping his influence also means discovering all the behaviors his relentlessly sanitized world has suppressed. At the same time, Buddy himself gradually transforms into a full-on monster. Costume designer Shawna-Nova Foley and puppeteer Devon Hawkes Ludlow deserve major credit for creating something that can move between cuddly television iconography and grotesque nightmare fuel without losing the connection between the two.
If there is a frustration with “Buddy,” it is that Kelly introduces ideas that are more provocative than the movie ultimately has time to explore. The Grace storyline is especially undercooked, and while her eventual connection to Buddy provides the emotional explanation for much of what we have been watching, the film rushes through revelations that could have given its surreal mythology more weight. We can piece together enough about how people, particularly children, become trapped inside Buddy’s bizarre house of pain, but the mechanics and implications remain deliberately hazy. The movie also brushes against an obvious contemporary reading about children’s screen time, parasocial attachment and the unsettling amount of authority parents surrender to whatever colorful character happens to occupy a television screen, yet it never digs deeply enough into those ideas for the satire to become truly biting.
Still, there is something refreshing about how thoroughly “Buddy” commits to its own warped wavelength. Kelly understands that explaining every corner of this universe would probably drain it of some of its power, and even when the thematic ambition exceeds the execution, the movie never loses its mischievous personality. What begins as a clever riff on corrupted children’s television gradually mutates into a surreal fairy tale about growing up, questioning the world adults have constructed for you and discovering that the smiling figure promising to keep you safe might be the thing you need to escape. “Buddy” may not fully capitalize on every idea hiding beneath its fuzzy orange exterior, but as a fleeting, funny and frequently deranged exercise in childhood nightmare fuel, it knows exactly how to leave a stain on the programming block.
Grade: B
BUDDY opens in theaters Friday, August 28.
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