BUDDY (2026)

Studio:   Saban Films
Director: Casper Kelly
Writer:   Casper Kelly, Jamie King
Producer: Tyler Davidson, Drew Sykes, Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, Tracy Rosenblum
Stars:    Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Tristan Borders, Madison Skyy Polan, Caleb “CJ” Williams, Luke Speakman, Patton Oswalt, Clint Howard, Michael Shannon, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key

Review Score:

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Summary:

A children’s TV show morphs from mirthful to macabre when its kids discover the magical singing unicorn who teaches them is actually a manipulative murderer.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

On a 1999 episode of the children’s TV show “It’s Buddy,” which takes place in a whimsical park in Happy Town, Mailman Miles greets children Freddy and Wade as he puts envelopes inside Mr. Mailbox. Freddy and Wade open the envelopes to find invitations to a dance party, which frustrates Freddy because she is afraid to dance. Wade says, “Oh, Buddy” to transform a small stuffed animal into Buddy, a magical orange unicorn who leads a singalong to inspire the kids to be brave.

After the song, Buddy asks another boy, Josh, about the dance party. Josh tells Buddy he doesn’t like dancing and would prefer to read his adventure book instead. Freddy and Wade join Betty Bunny and the show’s fourth child, Oliver, in the clubhouse while Buddy speaks to Josh about not wanting to go to the party. Buddy has the magic Worry Well conjure a pair of shoes to help Josh dance, but Josh refuses to wear them. Upset over Buddy’s continued pressure to dance, Josh storms offscreen. Buddy follows and angrily kills Josh. Mr. Mailbox is the only witness.

At the dance party, which includes additional characters Nurse Nancy, Couchy, Trashy, and Freddy’s talking backpack Strappy, Buddy explains Josh’s absence by claiming he went on a dancing tour in Diamond City. Once the show concludes and end credits roll, the three children hug Buddy and sing a signature song that resets the fantasy. Before the episode ends, however, Freddy notices Josh’s book covered in blood inside Trashy.

On the next episode, a girl named Hannah takes Josh’s place as the show’s fourth child. When Hannah starts to summon Buddy to help the kids clean the clubhouse, Freddy stops her from saying Buddy’s name. Freddy then pulls Wade outside to privately show him Josh’s bloody book from the trash. Wade goes to mail the book to Josh in Diamond City, but he and Freddy discover Mr. Mailbox had his door ripped off, rendering him unable to speak.

Buddy suddenly appears. Buddy explains the stained book by claiming he was painting a goodbye card for Josh and Betty Bunny spilled red paint on the book, so he got Josh a new one and threw this one away. Buddy then makes the bloody book vanish.

While cleaning the clubhouse, Freddy whispers to Wade that she is suspicious of Buddy’s story. Wade asks Betty Bunny about the paint-spilling incident. Betty tells the kids she never made Josh a card or spilled any paint.

Worried as well as frightened that Buddy lied, Wade feigns getting a splinter so he and Freddy can ask Nurse Nancy about Buddy behaving strangely. Nurse Nancy cheerfully assures the kids she will personally speak to Buddy to clear things up. Freddy and Wade spy on Nurse Nancy and Buddy’s conversation. The two kids see Buddy choke and beat Nurse Nancy to death.

Freddy and Wade run to tell Betty Bunny, Oliver, and Hannah what they witnessed, but Buddy interrupts them. Freddy and Wade reluctantly hug Buddy to sing the song that ends the show.

On the next episode, Charlie the Train arrives from Diamond City to deliver a present for Buddy’s birthday. Freddy stops Oliver and Hannah from saying Buddy’s name to summon him. She and Wade then pull Oliver and Hannah inside their treehouse to tell them they saw Buddy kill Nurse Nancy and believe he killed Josh too. With the Buddy stuffed animal seemingly spying on them, the kids plot to escape to Diamond City aboard Charlie the Train.

Uncertain of the situation, a confused Oliver says Buddy’s name to turn the stuffed animal into the large unicorn. The other three kids run to board Charlie the Train, but Buddy blocks the track. A confrontation ensues that ends with Buddy killing Charlie by pulling off the engine car’s face.

Buddy forces Freddy, Oliver, and Hannah to go to the clubhouse while he confronts Wade for revealing he killed the nurse. Freddy tries warning Betty Bunny that Buddy is going to kill Wade, but Betty doesn’t react. Remembering what she was taught about flammable cleaning chemicals, Freddy arms herself with a lighter and an aerosol can and interrupts Buddy in the middle of stabbing Wade. Freddy sprays Buddy with the can, but he coerces her into dropping the lighter. Wade recovers the lighter and sets Buddy on fire, gruesomely scarring half of his body.

Mailman Miles arrives for Buddy’s birthday party. Shocked by the sight of Buddy scorched and brandishing a bloody knife, Miles attempts to confront him. Buddy repeatedly stabs Miles to death while the four children attempt to escape Happy Town by climbing over a picket fence. Freddy and Hannah pull Mr. Mailbox out of the ground to take him with them. Everyone gets over the fence except for Wade, whom Freddy is unable to pull over. Buddy charges at Wade and impales him with his horn. Freddy, Oliver, and Hannah escape to a forest with Mr. Mailbox. Meanwhile, Buddy is upset to discover he cannot end the show and magically heal himself without the kids to sing his song.

In a suburb in reality, a mother named Grace dresses her young son Timothy’s scraped knee by applying two Band-Aids “so they can look out for each other.” She then picks up her older son Derek, who brings home a goldfish he got at a birthday party. Grace feels like she remembers Derek having a pet fish once before, but Derek tells her she is mistaken. Grace wonders if maybe she was thinking about Timothy instead.

Despite her husband Ben and their two boys already being seated at the dinner table, Grace calls for a nonexistent person to join them as though the entire family isn’t present. During dinner, an inexplicable feeling causes Grace to scream at an empty fifth chair sitting across from her. Grace resolves to contact a therapist the next day, which she does. She also gets another odd feeling when she observes the sticker on her car’s back window indicating only four people in her family.

Although Grace hired her to come after Ben was supposed to take the boys to baseball, psychic Dr. Deborah Burr arrives early to investigate Grace’s house for spirits. During a séance with the family, a TV suddenly starts playing. Grace becomes entranced by a clip of Buddy speaking to her through the screen. Ben enters the room and abruptly turns off the television.

Grace becomes distressed that she can’t find anything on the internet about a children’s show featuring an orange unicorn. Although she admits it sounds crazy, Grace tells her skeptical husband she feels like they had a third child they no longer remember. Ben becomes upset by the apparent suggestion that an imaginary unicorn kidnapped their kid and somehow erased their memories as well as all public information about its TV show.

Late in the evening, Grace sees Buddy on TV again. Entranced by him, Grace moves to put her hand on the screen against Buddy’s only for her arm to be pulled inside the TV. While being sucked into the screen, Grace tries to show Ben what is happening, but he is inexplicably unable to see her. The TV swallows Grace.

Back in the forest outside Happy Town, Freddy, Oliver, and Hannah resolve to make their way to Diamond City, which sparkles against the set’s backdrop. While navigating the woods, the kids realize their memories of life outside Happy Town and how they came to be with Buddy are muddled. A pond inspires Freddy to feel like she had a pet fish once.

A brainwashed Grace becomes the new nurse in Happy Town. While being bandaged, Buddy coerces Grace into hugging him tightly. Grace becomes uncomfortable and confused when Buddy licks her face and grabs her ass. Buddy leaves to search for the kids so he can make them sing to restore his body.

Freddy, Oliver, and Hannah encounter a strange old cowboy named George and his marionette companion Willie, who are in a relationship with each other. Willie explains they used to be with Buddy when Happy Town’s park was an old western town. He goes on to reveal that a kid named Larry played a prank by replacing the lyrics of Buddy’s end theme with mean words that expressed hatred. The altered song caused Buddy to transform and hurt Larry. Willie and George became exiles.

George convinces the kids to eat a sentient flower whose petals cause them to hallucinate. When they recover, they find Willie and George missing and Freddy’s talking backpack stolen.

Buddy finds Willie and George with Strappy by a swamp. Buddy kills George with an ax and drowns Willie in the swamp. He then starts tearing at the backpack’s straps, but Freddy interrupts him. While Buddy is distracted, Oliver and Hannah race in on bicycles to rescue Freddy and Strappy before speeding away.

The kids make it to Diamond City, but they are heartbroken to discover the city is merely a small prop. Buddy captures the kids and forces an episode ending that restores him.

A new episode of “It’s Buddy” begins with a boy named Tyler taking Wade’s place and a new mailman named Justin. Terrified to be back in Happy Town, Freddy, Oliver, and Hannah are forced to apologize for running away. When Buddy pushes Freddy against a tree, she injures her arm, so Buddy sends her to Nurse Grace.

Grace bandages Freddy with two Band-Aids like she did with her son Timothy. Feeling like they recognize each other, Grace and Freddy start to suspect they are mother and daughter.

Buddy has Freddy rejoin the others in the park for a song. Instead of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” Freddy sings Buddy’s theme with the revised lyrics she heard from Willie. The mean song causes Buddy to transform into a dragon-like creature with horns, claws, and fangs. Happy Town is also cast in darkness.

Dark Buddy starts strangling Freddy until Grace, now fully remembering her forgotten daughter, saves Freddy by stabbing scissors into Buddy’s eye. Grace and Freddy both remember they had a five-person family.

Grace and the kids hide in the clubhouse with Betty Bunny. Mr. Mailbox uses his flag to point toward Worry Well. Freddy realizes they can use the well’s magic to escape.

Buddy violently kills Mailman Justin. He then breaks into the clubhouse to tear apart Betty Bunny and Couchy.

Grace encourages Freddy to go down the well with Oliver, Hannah, Strappy, and Mr. Mailbox while she battles Buddy. Buddy kills Grace. Tyler embraces Buddy and expresses his love, which causes Buddy to return to normal, though his hug crushes Tyler.

Unable to fit down the well, Buddy slices off the sides of his body so he can follow the kids. At the bottom of the well, the kids enter a weird workshop of sentient puppet parts. Buddy brutally pulls Hannah through the door, killing her. Tired of running, Oliver agrees to hug Buddy, who swallows him whole.

Still carrying Strappy and Mr. Mailbox, Freddy escapes into a liminal school with strange classrooms related to “It’s Buddy.” Freddy falls as Buddy pursues her down a hallway. Strappy uses his backpack straps to trip Buddy. With Freddy holding Mr. Mailbox upside down, Buddy falls and impales himself on Mr. Mailbox’s post, which kills the unicorn.

After recovering Strappy and Mr. Mailbox, Freddy walks past a mural depicting Buddy with two similar unicorns, Bobby and Benny, the latter of whom she encountered as an elderly mute in the workshop. Freddy enters a gymnasium with a bank of monitors that show enrapt children watching “It’s Buddy” from their homes. Freddy goes through one of the screens to return to reality. Without the show’s magic, Mr. Mailbox and Strappy turn into an ordinary mailbox and backpack, causing Freddy to cry. Having been barbecuing outside, the home’s owner is confused to see a bloody girl in his living room.

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Review:

Some filmmaker names instantly inform you you’re about to watch something uniquely creative, that no one else could have made in the same manner. David Lynch became so indelibly associated with dreamlike aesthetics that a specific surreal style is now commonly called “Lynchian.” Nobody documents cringe realism through uncomfortably askew lenses like Nathan Fielder does with his peculiar projects. There are simply certain creators whose imaginations operate on a different frequency than everyone else’s. The works they produce end up being wonderfully weird because of this.

Casper Kelly is one of these people whose offbeat ideas come from somewhere only his mind can find. After “Too Many Cooks,” his 11-minute parody of TV show intros, went viral with millions of views, Kelly twisted a traditional holiday fireplace video into “Adult Swim Yule Log” (review here), a full feature where after a few minutes of fireplace footage, the burning piece of wood goes on a killing spree. Its sequel, “Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out” (review here), took Kelly’s style of satire further by being a brilliantly bonkers sendup of a typical Hallmark Christmas movie. So when “Buddy” comes touted as his horror film about a Barney-like character who magically traps children in a ‘90s TV show and murders them, you immediately know you’re in for a wild ride through nostalgia and nightmares like only Casper Kelly can conjure.

One of the ways you can tell Kelly runs in unusual circles and keeps an eclectic contact list is by looking at the actors who wanted to participate in “Buddy.” It’s not even close to out of the ordinary for kooky Clint Howard to show up as a disheveled cowboy with an exposed potbelly who is in a same-sex relationship with a wooden marionette. Nor is it unexpected for comedian and prolific voice actor Patton Oswalt to be heard warbling through the zipper of an anthropomorphic backpack. Odd movies are magnets for those guys, and neither of them minds clowning around.

Cristin Milioti, on the other hand, definitely didn’t have to do “Buddy.” Fresh off of winning an Emmy for her performance in “The Penguin,” there’s no way Milioti’s agent wanted her to work alongside an oversized orange unicorn for her follow-up. Kelly’s script sneaked past her people somehow and Milioti personally chose to go all-in on a project that undoubtedly sounded attractively eccentric. Same goes for Michael Shannon, who took time out from touring with his R.E.M. cover band to voice the previously mentioned ventriloquist dummy that makes out with Clint Howard.

“Buddy” has such a quirky narrative structure, a main character doesn’t really emerge until late in the movie. Buddy probably qualifies by default, except he’s almost entirely absent for an 18-minute stretch in the middle. Cristin Milioti may be billed first in the credits, but she doesn’t even appear until this midsection, which starts about a half hour into the runtime. One of the kids on the “It’s Buddy” show, Freddy, holds most of the film’s focus, although it doesn’t always feel that way until everything comes together in the third act.

“It’s Buddy” is a fictional kids TV show from 1999 that mashes “Barney’s” edutainment with “Pee-wee’s Playhouse’s” colorful cast of happy humans and talking furniture. For the first 30 minutes, the film trots through a trio of episodes that get progressively darker as Buddy and company’s lessons about being brave, dancing, and cleaning up shift into suspicions that poorly explained disappearances and shocking sights suggest Buddy might be a psychopathic killer. The entertainment value is high here, as I had a wry smile on my face the entire time with the pitch-perfect parodies of PBS entertainment getting hit hard with hilariously cartoonish carnage.

Out-of-synch viewers might feel the tempo skip when “Buddy” switches off the show and switches to depicting a suburban mother’s life in “reality.” Interestingly though, this is where having an actor of Cristin Milioti’s caliber becomes a big boon for “Buddy.” Milioti doesn’t dare play her part, Grace, for direct laughs, even though she’s in a dark comedy. On the contrary, “Buddy’s” domestic drama is surprisingly strong.

With Topher Grace as Milioti’s husband Ben, the two of them engage in emotional interactions that are subtly funny because of where these more serious pieces are placed. In an ordinary movie, an argument that starts with a wife pleading, “Please be here with me” followed by an upset husband jabbing, “I’m right here, where the hell are you?” while a frowning child overhears from his bedroom would be appropriately heart-wrenching. When sandwiched between a scene where a Lorraine Warren wannabe bumbles through a psychic investigation and Ben flips out at the idea of an imaginary unicorn kidnapping a child he and his wife mysteriously don’t remember, the movie’s horror and humor form a curious choir for a song only “Buddy” can sing.

The tone only trips up on a pair of sexualized scenes whose contributions are questionable. It’s strange for “Buddy” to have its namesake grope Grace while licking her face and forcing her to hug him. Buddy works just fine as a fun villain who goofily giggles and also violently punches an animated clock in post-murder frustration. Making him a pervert for one quick bit doesn’t improve his character at all.

There’s also a scene when Clint Howard’s cowboy tells one of the young girls she “has a pretty face.” It’s the lightest hint of pedophilia possible, and it’s intentionally included for the ick factor. But having him reach toward her at the same time makes for a mildly uncomfortable moment the movie doesn’t even need.

Outside of those stutters, “Buddy’s” powerful engine fires on all cylinders of humor-fueled horror. Once the two separate sections merge, “Buddy” goes back to the show’s fantastical world for more weirdness before becoming a Backrooms-esque liminal nightmare for the finale. There’s so much going on here, from the casual descent into terror to one of the funniest deliveries of the word “b*tch” you’ll ever hear, that “Buddy” becomes a movie you’ll rush to tell other people about just so you can continue talking about it. Few films stick with you like that, and Casper Kelly is one of the few people who can create them.

Review Score: 85

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