Barney Gets Bloodthirsty in Buddy

Sundance Film Review: Buddy
Director: Casper Kelly
BoulderLight Pictures, Low Spark Films
Premiere: 01.22.2026

All entertainment contains some element of propaganda, whether designed to push an agenda or simply pull at our heartstrings — and it’s even more insidious when combined with a heavy dose of nostalgia. The success of Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow at Sundance 2024 demonstrated our collective fascination with bridging the real world with the world inside our screens, especially the ones we grew up watching as children. The premiere of Buddy at Sundance 2026 pushed this uncomfortable truth to hilarious and horrifying depths. 

I was drawn to Buddy by the utter lack of information about it on the internet, save for a single, mysterious logline on the Sundance website: “A brave girl and her friends must escape a kids television show.” Coming from Casper Kelly, an Adult Swim comedy-horror veteran, and BoulderLight Pictures, the production company behind Barbarian and Weapons, the film seemed perfectly engineered for the festival’s Midnight category. That was enough to drag myself up to Park City for an 11:55 p.m. screening. I wondered if Buddy might be a 90-minute extended cut of Kelly’s 2014 viral short Too Many Cooks, which parodied dozens of TV genres in a surrealist slasher. In a way, I was right, and miraculously, it kind of worked. 

Buddy, voiced by the incomparable Keegan-Michael Key, is a unicorn from a magical land who lives with a group of adorable kiddos. Accompanied by Betty Bunny, Nurse Nancy and Mailman Miles, he teaches lessons about sharing, cleaning up and being brave, always wrapped up in a song and ending with a big group hug. The matrix first starts to glitch when a boy named Josh suddenly disappears after refusing to participate in the fun — and a girl named Freddy (Delaney Quinn, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) discovers his book, covered in blood, in the trash. 

Aside from the comedic absurdity inherent to the film’s premise, most of the laughs arise from the horrified reactions of talking household items like Mr. Mailbox, Charlie the Train (Michael Shannon, Man of Steel, The Shape of Water) and Strappy the Backpack (Patton Oswalt, The King of Queens, Ratatouille) as they witness murder after murder. The child actors are nothing short of excellent, and Quinn especially displays an impressive range of emotions as she shepherds the whiplash transitions from hilarity to horror and back again. 

Just when the pastel, singsongy clubhouse begins to grate and the comedic beats start wearing thin, the aspect ratio shifts and the world inside the ‘90s TV box disappears, replaced by a seemingly normal family in the present day. A suburban housewife (Cristin Milioti, The Penguin, Palm Springs) is haunted by a nagging feeling of “icy dread” that something or someone is missing from her perfect life, though her exasperated husband (Topher Grace, That ‘70s Show, Spider-Man 3) dismisses her concerns. Milioti’s sharp character echoes her role in Black Mirror’s acclaimed “USS Callister” episode: a woman trapped in a unique hell devised by a seemingly warm, caring figure gone rogue. 

I’ll admit that the satire grew weary after a while, and a few of the tropes — like a random psychedelic trip sequence and an unnecessary mascot groping moment — made me roll my eyes. However, Buddy is still worth watching for the handcrafted set design, practical effects and puppetry alone. Like Barbie’s journey to the real world in Greta Gerwig’s 2023 hit, the kids’ expedition to find safety in Diamond City takes place entirely on a retro sound stage. There’s talking flowers, ventriloquist dummies and a giant dino-monster à la 1954 Godzilla. A great deal of credit is owed to production designer Anna Kathleen, who worked on A Different Man, and Emmy-winning puppeteer Devon Hawkes Ludlow. In one shot that mimics Gus Fring’s dramatic death in Breaking Bad, Buddy slowly turns to the audience after a fiery murder attempt, his fuzzy orange face half melted off in gruesome detail. 

Buddy is many things. It’s a satire of children’s entertainment and the weaponization of nostalgia. It’s a moving story about a parent and child reuniting after unspeakable trauma. It’s Barney & Friends directed by Stanley Kubrick. At the very least, as Topher Grace remarked in the post-screening Q&A, “It’s fucking original.” —Asha Pruitt

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.