Buddy (2026)

I went into Buddy completely blind. No trailers, nothing. All I knew going in was that it opens with about 20 minutes of what looks like an actual kids’ show, and that’s exactly how I wanted it. There’s something rare about walking into a theater with zero expectations and just letting a movie take you wherever it wants to go.

The premise centers on “It’s Buddy!”, a candy-colored children’s program where a bright orange unicorn leads a group of kids through songs, dances, and life lessons in a plastic, sunshine-soaked world that feels ripped straight out of Saturday morning television. That opening lulls you into thinking you accidentally wandered into the wrong screening, right up until one kid refuses to go along with Buddy’s routine. That’s when the cracks start showing, and once they do, the movie stops pretending to be anything close to kid-friendly. This is not a movie for children, despite a poster that could easily be mistaken for one, and the R rating is earned several times over.

Casper Kelly directs this with a gleeful, almost sadistic energy, like he’s daring the audience to keep laughing even as things get bloodier and more deranged. Cristin Milioti and Delaney Quinn carry much of the emotional weight once the show’s saccharine facade starts to fall apart, and they keep the movie grounded enough that the chaos around them lands instead of just becoming noise. Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, and Patton Oswalt round out a cast that’s clearly having a blast being thrown into this deranged version of a children’s program, and that energy is contagious. You can feel the cast enjoying the absurdity of it all, and that enjoyment translates directly to the audience.

As someone who went in without any preview footage, the tonal whiplash of watching a cheerful puppet show curdle into something genuinely terrifying hit exactly the way I think the filmmakers wanted it to. Once Buddy stops being pleased, the film commits fully to that shift, and it never really looks back to apologize for it. This is refreshing in a horror comedy, a genre that so often hedges its bets by playing things safer than they need to be.

Part of what made the experience so much fun was watching it with a full theater. There’s so much joy had in hearing an entire room gasp, laugh, and groan at the same moments, and Buddy is clearly built for that communal reaction. You can feel the audience figuring out in real time just how far the film is willing to go. I haven’t had that experience in a theater in a while, and it’s a big part of why this stuck with me the way it did.

Is it a perfect movie? I don’t really care, because that’s not the question this film is asking me to answer. It knows exactly what it is: a gross, funny, occasionally shocking horror comedy that takes the aesthetic of children’s programming and turns it into a weapon against the audience’s nostalgia. It’s not trying to be prestige horror, and it would probably resent being treated like it should be. It delivers a genuinely entertaining ride that never lets up once it decides to go for it, and as someone who walked in with zero context, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to experience it.

If you loved Cocaine Bear or M3GAN for the sheer gleeful commitment to a ridiculous premise, this belongs on your list. It’s also a great pick for a group outing – one you’ll want to see with a crowd rather than alone on a couch later. I’d recommend going in as blind as I did if you can manage it. Skip the trailers and just let the first few minutes of that kids’ show lull you in before it turns on you.