If you’ve ever looked at Barney the Dinosaur and thought, “There is definitely a soul-eating demon behind those dead, purple eyes,” then Casper Kelly has made the movie of your dreams (or nightmares), Buddy.
The man who broke the internet with the viral surrealist masterpiece “Too Many Cooks“ is back. His latest project, Buddy, just premiered at Sundance’s Midnight program, and it’s precisely the kind of unhinged, pop-culture deconstruction we’ve come to expect from the king of Adult Swim weirdness.
Welcome to the Neighborhood Or Else
Buddy takes the ’90s nostalgia and runs it through a meat grinder. The film follows a group of kids who find themselves literally trapped inside a colorful, tactile TV show world—think Pee-wee’s Playhouse meets Dora the Explorer, but with a much higher body count.
The star of the show is Buddy, a deceptively cuddly unicorn. In the world of the show, everything is “happy,” but there’s a catch: if the kids step out of line, question their reality, or fail to follow the “educational” script, Buddy stops being a pal and starts being a predator. It’s a high-stakes battle of wits and survival where the cost of a “teaching moment” is your life.
A Powerhouse Cast
Usually, “mascot horror” feels like a low-budget indie affair, but Casper Kelly brought out the big guns for this one. The cast is a bizarrely perfect blend of comedy and intense drama. It stars Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, Patton Oswald, and Cristin Milioti, who already proved she’s the queen of “trapped in a weird reality” stories in Palm Springs and Black Mirror.
Why It’s Not Just Another “Evil Barney” Movie
When producer JD Lifshitz (BoulderLight Pictures) first pitched a Barney-style horror movie, Kelly was hesitant. He didn’t want to copy Five Nights at Freddy’s or Willy’s Wonderland.
The game-changer was the “trapped in the show” element. Kelly realized that almost all of his work—from the endless loop of Too Many Cooks to the claustrophobic Adult Swim Yule Log—is about people who can’t escape their surroundings.
“Everything you’ve done has the theme of being trapped,” Kelly recalled a producer telling him. “After the movie, I’m like, ‘Well, I’ll be damned. It’s about being trapped again.’”
The Look: Barbarian Meets Sesame Street
To make the movie look as good as it is weird, Kelly teamed up with DP Zach Kuperstein, the cinematographer behind the terrifyingly effective Barbarian. They avoided the standard “sitcom” camera angles, opting for a cinematic, moody, and epic look that makes the bright, “friendly” colors of the TV set feel even more threatening.
Watching
While Kelly is a cult legend for his late-night Adult Swim experiments, “Buddy“ is being positioned as a new chapter in his career.
Buddy made its world premiere at Sundance, with some calling it “a gross-out film”. As soon as release details surface for the horror-comedy, we’ll let you know.
