By JJ Ledewitz, Senior Arts and Culture Editor
Remember Barney & Friends? How about Blue’s Clues? There used to be many kids’ shows with human characters interacting with talking animals and sentient objects. Have you ever wondered what those human characters’ lives were like outside the show? Buddy reveals a horrifying possibility, one that’s six feet tall, orange and is “a unicorn from a magic land” with a murderous twinkle in his eyes. And it’s a blast.
Buddy is a comedy horror film distributed by Roadside Attractions and Saban Films on a budget of only 3 million dollars. It begins by presenting snippets from an eerily nostalgic 90s-style children’s show called It’s Buddy! In the show, Buddy, an orange unicorn with magic powers, hangs out with a whole cast of characters: a group of children, a few adults like Nurse Nancy and Mailman Miles and some sentient objects like Clocky the Clock and Couchy the Couch. It’s identical to Barney and Friends or other children’s shows of the time, down to Buddy being a large, anthropomorphic, mythical animal with a goofy voice and the appearance of a man in a heavy costume.
Select scenes of It’s Buddy! are flashed on screen, with Buddy at the center of attention and all the happy kids beside him, smiling with endless, innocent grins – but things soon get sinister. Buddy gets angry when one of the children refuses to dance, and after some off-screen screaming and a spray of blood, the child is gone. Buddy claims he “went on a dancing tour in Diamond City!” But the other children know something is up.
As they slowly realize that the world they live in – cotton candy-colored, in a 4:3 aspect ratio, filled with blind happiness, talking objects, no parents and no responsibilities – is weird, Buddy’s true nature emerges: something demonic, something evil. This is not a TV show, not really. It’s a prison, and Buddy’s the reason they’re all in there. And he’ll do anything to keep his prisoners inside and smiling.
The film’s 3 million dollar budget is clear in every frame – and I mean that in a good way. It’s used well. They use every cent to perfect the set, the effects, the cast and the ambience of the show within the film. The children’s TV show set looks like a real one, the colors and the design are shaped and chosen perfectly. It looks so real that parents have actually brought kids to see the film, only to realize it’s a horror film once Buddy butchers the child just off camera. It really does – at first – seem like something for children, which is what makes it so incredibly disturbing. Plus, the budget is used especially creatively once the film shows what’s happening in the real world and how people outside the show are discovering it and realizing something about this old children’s show is wrong.
Buddy’s cast is great. The child actors, mostly unknowns around age 10, have to do so much: they have to play a character in a children’s show, they have to play a child actor and they have to play a victim coming to the realization that the innocence they thought they knew was a lie. It’s a lot, and they hit it out of the park. Buddy himself is voiced by Keegan-Michael Key. Key has incredible range with his voice, being able to portray what’s essentially a Barney rip-off who slowly changes into a maniacal, bloodthirsty murderer.
Patton Oswalt and Michael Shannon (in his first theatrical voice role!) lend their voices to some of the inanimate objects lying around, while the rest of those objects are voiced by legendary Looney Tunes voice actor Eric Bauza. Cristin Milioti plays a mother in the outside world who knows that something is wrong, and she perfectly portrays the feeling of insanity that comes with it.
The comedy horror genre has exploded in popularity over the last couple of decades, and Buddy is a clear example of how to mesh both aspects in a new way. While something like Ready or Not brings its comedy through character, and while something like The Monkey brings its comedy through absurdity, Buddy sprinkles the innocence of children’s TV with instances of brutality and chilling self-awareness. It manages to have a nice blend in an appropriate sense and rewards nostalgia with hilarity.
2026 has been a great year for horror as a whole, with two mid/low-budget horror films, Obsession and Backrooms, dominating the summer. Buddy didn’t get the same recognition, but it goes just as crazy as those two horror films, and maybe even crazier. It’s got enough horror for those who don’t like comedy, and enough comedy for those who don’t like horror. It’s something experimental that works, and something that’s really worth checking out.
Photo Credit: Unsplash