While Buddy possesses an unsettling Barney-esque kid-slasher aesthetic, its unusual quality gives way to the usual treatment of Black characters and a final act that feels sensational without a point.
Buddy, playing at FrightFest, captures the aesthetic of children’s shows while highlighting the often predatory nature and conditioning that shows instill in kids. But there is also a creepy, uncomfortable factor regarding how the film treats its Black characters. So, it’s hard to figure out where to classify this movie. Many moviegoers might love it. But others, if they pick up on it, will have a difficult time as the film continues. While Buddy possesses an unsettling Barney-esque kid-slasher aesthetic, its unusual quality gives way to the usual treatment of Black characters and a final act that feels sensational without a point.
Casper Kelly (V/H/S/Halloween, Adult Swim Yule Log) directs with a script by him and Jamie King (World’s Best, Jessica Jones). It follows a group of kids fighting to escape a kids’ television show. Every aspect of the kids’ show has that familiar nostalgia, akin to shows like Barney, where kids play with and hug a costumed animal. It stars Delaney Quinn (Eugene the Marine, The Roses) as Freddy, a young girl enjoying her life inside a television show.
But once something occurs off-camera, Freddy realizes something is wrong with Buddy, the costumed unicorn voiced by Keegan-Michael Key (Keanu, Play Dirty)—maybe he’s trapped in the sunken place. Additional names attached to the film are Patton Oswalt (The Dink, Goat), as Strappy, and Michael Shannon (The Bikeriders, The Shape of Water) as the voice of Willie. But the kids deliver the horror as they struggle to escape their deadly but sunshiny prison. That includes Wade, played by Caleb Williams (Abbott Elementary, The Wonder Years), Hannah, played by Madison Skyy Polan (Despicable Me 4), and Oliver, played by Tristan Borders (The Righteous Gemstones, Southern Gospel).
Buddy Had a Phenomenal Start But Splutters Later
Balancing the perfect amount of nostalgia, complete with visuals, music, and that ever-present faux optimism, Buddy builds an immediate dread for what’s to come. Unfortunately, it stumbles as it tries to explore the world outside of the deadly children’s show. This movie might have one of my favorite openings because of how it perfectly captures the shows of that time. But it doesn’t remain there, and the movie suffers for it.
This is not a reflection on the performances. The couple, played by Topher Grace (Heretic, Spider-Man 3) and Cristin Milioti (The Penguin, Palm Springs), are outstanding if a walking cliché. Topher’s Ben is the typical hands-off, gaslighting husband. It’s no wonder the flash shows Buddy occupying Ben’s seat at the table. Meanwhile, Cristin’s Grace showcases that mother’s instinct when something is off. The children make the stakes believable even amongst the talking mailbox, backpack, and train. So the cast is not the issue.
But Buddy would work better if the outside world remained unknown. Where the children try to escape and do not know where they will land—both figuratively and literally—next because the world was not shown to us. A rinse and repeat of the show, that includes a dissolution of the horrifically cheerful as whatever Buddy is grows more dangerous beneath that sing-song veneer would make Buddy an unforgettable nightmare.
Unpack Why Onscreen Harm Is Acceptable for Some
While there is no shortage of deaths in Buddy, they are either not people, offscreen, or not bloody. There are four (arguably) exceptions. One is a white man who gets an axe. However, the others are the Black characters. The unicorned menace kills Black mailman, Mailman Miles, played by Bennie Taylor (Coyote vs. Acme, The Gentleman Thief), by stabbing him repeatedly, and the other two are Black children. One, a latecomer to the show, Tyler (They Fight, Emperor of Ocean Park), played by Tory Jacqui Malone, Buddy hugs to death, and there’s blood on his mouth. The other, Wade, Buddy impales with his unicorn horn. The latter feels particularly egregious.
In a society that, especially now, normalizes brutality against Black bodies no matter the age, there needs to be a discussion about why, of all the kids who die, Wade is the only one that’s shown. The others do not die in bloody ways, or it’s never shown onscreen, such as Josh, who is the first death offscreen. Buddy might be darkly entertaining, but that entertainment veers into a disregard for Black people, and truthfully, we have enough of that outside of films.
An Unraveled Final Act
At the end, too much happens that makes no sense as the children run from strange space to strange space with noexplanation for why, making it feel like purposeless imagery. It felt like the end of the first Escape Room but lacks the connection to the rest of the film. If the film wanted to maintain the mystery, it should have stayed in that world. Instead Buddy keeps asking audiences to suspend disbelief, and it introduces more unexplained scenes and locations.
Buddy begins as a strong horror film that, while it won’t make you leave the lights on, captures an eerie quality of children’s shows, especially in light of discovering how many children have suffered on these shows. You cannot watch without thinking of things like Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. However, it forfeits that engaging and haunting promise as it falls into too many standard traps for horror films. This includes how it regards Black characters as violence fodder and the notion that more is good. Ultimately, Buddy moves from fantastic to good to okay, squandering potential even if you leave happy with it.
