‘Buddy’ review: A kids’ TV show takes a deadly turn in smart, fresh horror comedy

Dir: Casper Kelly. US. 2026. 95mins

Weaponising the idea that the overly cheerful anthropomorphic animal stars of live-action children’s shows are actually really creepy, Buddy creates an enjoyable nightmare scenario in which a beloved TV unicorn turns homicidal. Making his feature directorial debut, Casper Kelly continues in the same vein as his viral 2014 short Too Many Cooks for this twisted horror-comedy, satirising the smiling banality of Barney-like kids’ programming with plenty of gore and snark. Keegan-Michael Key is superb as the evil titular unicorn, with Cristin Milioti getting into the surreal spirit as a freaked-out mother who unexpectedly finds herself involved in the cursed show.

Plenty of gore and snark

Premiering as part of Sundance’s Midnight section, this is an ideal choice for younger viewers who will savour Kelly’s knowingly postmodern approach. Fans of Too Many Cooks, which fiendishly mocked the inanity of cheesy sitcom theme songs, should be keen to see this spin through Pee-wee’s Playhouse-like strangeness. The cast also includes Patton Oswalt and Michael Shannon, which could also help boost its profile.

For its first act, the film is designed as a series of episodes of a 1999 children’s show called Buddy, led by a friendly unicorn named Buddy (voiced by Key) who teaches important lessons to the child characters, including insecure Freddy (Delaney Quinn), through simple songs. But the pleasant, vacuous programme takes a dark turn when one of the children goes missing — and all signs indicate that Buddy is responsible. Freddy and her friend Wade (Caleb ’CJ’ Williams) suspect Buddy might be a murderer, but the shiny, happy programme simply moves on to its next episode, as if nothing disturbing is occurring.

The witty tension between the show’s benign surface and the sinister events taking place was also employed by Kelly for Too Many Cooks, which kept repeating the same idiotically catchy theme-song sequence until viewers realised that the fabric of the imaginary sitcom seemed to be fracturing. Buddy certainly does not disappoint in its early sequences, the unravelling of the show’s framework expected but also quite satisfying. (The mimicking of grainy 1990s-style broadcast television only adds to the sense of unease.) Key’s overly jolly voice is especially effective, constantly hinting at the mental illness underlining Buddy’s desire for his human costars to love him. 

If the viewer is ahead of Kelly at the start of Buddy, the filmmaker unveils a surprise after the first act, cutting to the present and shooting in a more traditional cinematic style. Now, we are in the world of Grace (Milioti), who has a husband (Topher Grace) and two sons. Her suburban life seems ideal, but she cannot shake the belief that she has a third child, even though there is no evidence of that. Buddy provocatively switches gears for a muted psychological thriller that appears to have no connection to the Buddy show — until Kelly reveals a nifty twist.

Puppet designer Devon Hawkes Ludlow and production designer Anna Kathleen are key contributors on Buddy. Nearly everything on the children’s show is alive — including Oswalt as the voice of the backpack Strappy and Shannon voicing a cowboy with a dark past — and the puppetry is endearingly old-fashioned. Along the same lines, the Buddy costume smartly recalls the likes of Barney and The Teletubbies, the character’s dead eyes and frozen expression a hint of the wickedness to come.

Kelly, who also directed one of the segments of the 2025 horror anthology V/H/S/Halloween, works with cinematographer Zach Kuperstein to make the children’s show look upsettingly phony. (Kuperstein achieved a similar effect for Anna Kendrick’s dating-game thriller Woman Of The Hour.) But when Buddy moves to the present — as well as another disorienting reality that will eventually come into play — the filmmaker continues to find inventive ways to ratchet up our feeling of dread. In truth, Buddy is not especially scary, its many kill scenes staged for laughs. But if this horror-comedy makes an obvious point — television shows meant for kids sure are weird — Kelly finds enough fresh ways to exploit the idea.