Buddy is the Backroom's Barney
Written by Niomi Dylan Sass
Originality, Creativity, and Absurdity are just a few words that popped into my mind after watching this new dark-comedy slasher-horror: Buddy (2026). A brand new film starring the voice of Keegan-Michael Key as Buddy the Unicorn, alongside actors like Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, and Topher Grace. The screenplay was written by Casper Kelly and Jamie King, and Mr. Kelly directed the feature film as well. Casper Kelly’s earliest directing credits are from an animated TV film, The Scooby Doo Project (1999). If you aren’t aware, I am not only an upcoming horror historian, but a full-fledged Scooby Doo historian, and the way I NEVER KNEW THE SCOOBY DOO PROJECT EXISTED. It was a real movie Cartoon Network made of the Scooby gang parodying The Blair Witch Project (1999). Strangely, this movie possesses a similar vibe: a kids' world existing in the last place it possibly should.
Buddy the Unicorn is a kids' show, and at the beginning of the movie we get a glimpse into a world that seemed almost too perfect until it got weirder and weirder. The cast of the show consists of 4 children, a nurse, the mailman, numerous objects that would be inanimate in our world that are now completely animated, Betty the Bunny, and Buddy. In one of the first episodes, Josh, one of the kid cast members, isn’t in the best of moods and starts to defy not only the group activity but Buddy himself. This upsets the bright orange and yellow unicorn, and we get our first off-screen kill consisting of blood splattering all over Josh's book. Buddy got rid of the body and disposed of the bloody book in a trash can near the clubhouse. One of the other children, Freddie, happened to stumble upon the discarded evidence in the garbage and got a terrible feeling that something bad had happened to Josh.
It’s a brand new episode with a new addition to the cast, Hannah, the replacement, because the show feels like it needs to have a constant rotation of 4 kids. Freddie shares her knowledge with Wade, one of her friends, and convinces him that something bad happened to Josh. When they ask Buddy about the book, he says it was wet paint that Betty the Bunny accidentally spilled on it. When the kids ask Betty about her spilling paint, she tells them that's a lie and gets remarkably offended. Now the two’s suspicions are only getting stronger. Wade pretends to get a splinter so he and Freddie can go to the nurse's office to confide in one of the only adults there.
The nurse assures them nothing is wrong and that she would talk to Buddy. The cynical unicorn appears right at the end of the children's conversation with the nurse and tells the two kids to go back to the group. They eavesdrop on the conversation between Buddy and the Nurse by peeping through the window. All seems to be well, so they decide to go back to the group. Just as they turn around, Strappy the Backpack says he sees Buddy hugging the nurse's neck. Then the two kids witness Buddy bash the nurse's face into the counter in a rage and hit one of the animated clocks off the wall. The two rush back to the rest of the group to try and warn them about what they just saw. Buddy walks out, very cheerily, might I add, and tells everyone, “Don’t go in the clubhouse, I just
mopped.” The magical unicorn then forces the episode to end.
When one episode ends, a new one comes right back on, and the two kids still remember everything. In the world of this program, Buddy begins as a stuffed animal plushie and stays in that form until one of the children runs into a problem where they need his help solving it. One of the kids has to summon him by calling his name out loud. The theme of this new episode is Buddy’s birthday, and it begins with Betty waiting for the final gift to arrive so she can throw the dark unicorn a party. Just before one of the kids goes to summon Buddy, the two mentally scarred children are telling them they should throw Buddy a surprise party as a ploy to buy time. They said instead of saying his name to just say “B-Word” instead. The two get Hannah and Oliver, the other young castmates, alone to tell them something is seriously wrong with B-Word. One of the kids asks if he is sick, and Freddie says, “Yes, but not like a cold, like in the head.”
Just as they tell the rest of the gang what Buddy did, the plushie version of him abruptly spawns in the window, spying on the kids. Of course, they get creeped out as one would and head to the train in desperate hopes of hitching a ride to Diamond City for help. The stuffed animal version of Buddy is still following the kids. Three of the kids make it to the animated train, Charlie, and they see Oliver snitching, I mean summoning Buddy. The three tell Charlie that Wade is super sick and needs to get to a doctor in Diamond City. Just as the engine turns over, Buddy appears in front of the only exit. He sternly tells Wade to go to the nurse, and if she thinks he’s that sick, then they can take him to a doctor. That’s when Wade screams out that he can’t do that because Buddy killed the nurse. The diabolical horned friend calls Wade a liar and says he’s hurting his feelings, and on his birthday. After an exchange of hilarious jabs from the kids, in a fury, Buddy rips Charlie's face right off of his train body, then angrily demands the kids to go back to the clubhouse, except Wade.
There is a second storyline within this movie: the real world. The film follows a family of four: Grace, Ben, and their two sons. Grace picks up her older son from a birthday party where he gets a goldfish as a parting gift. It reminds the mom of a memory she had when he was younger and had a goldfish, but the son doesn’t recall the memory at all. Later that night, at dinner time, once Ben, her two boys, and she were all at the dining table, Grace still called out for everyone to come eat. Her husband reminded her that everyone was already there, which seemed to confuse her as she looked around the table. In the middle of dinner, all Grace could do was fixate on the fifth chair at the table, the noticeably empty seat. She let out a horrific scream of complete utter terror. When she was talking to her husband later about what happened, all she could explain was that there was an icy cold hole inside her while she looked at the chair, so he suggested they get rid of the chair. Ben is going to be of no help, thank you, Ben.
As Grace is getting the boys into their car to take them to school, her focus is shifted to the family sticker on the back windshield, the stick-figure ones of each family member. She is staring at it with the same expression as when viewing the empty chair at the table. When she's on a video call with her therapist, she mindlessly redrew the stick-figured family in her notebook, and this time there was a third kid. This third child had no features drawn on its person like the other family members, almost as if Grace had forgotten what the third child even looked like. With an unhelpful husband, she went with the option of hiring a clairvoyant to see if there was anything wrong with the house. My favorite line in the movie came from the psychic when she was responding to Grace telling her about her husband not believing her. The self-proclaimed doctor says, “Our intuitions are more perceptive than our conscious mind.” I feel like I could write a whole thesis paper about that one loaded line, but I digress.
The psychic has the family join hands downstairs at the dinner table for a Séance Knowles. Just as the clairvoyant starts her rituals, the upstairs TV turns on, and it’s a commercial for the Buddy Show. Grace hears it and runs upstairs to watch it, and Ben follows. He turns the television off, dismissing it as some random kids' show. Later the same night, Grace and Ben get into an argument about her bringing a psychic into the house. Then she confesses what's been truly bugging her: she feels like they have 3 kids. Then she goes on to say she couldn’t find anything on the internet about an orange unicorn kids' show, trying to correlate the two thoughts together. Sarcastically, her husband's rebuttal was, “What, you think some imaginary unicorn snuck in, stole one of our kids, erased our memory, and all public records of it?” As absurd as what he thinks is a far-off, deranged speculation, Grace's thought is: it high-key is exactly what happened. More or less.
Did that psychic take Venmo as payment? Will Grace ever find her third child? Is it one of the kids that are on the set of Buddy’s show? Is that psychotic unicorn going to kill Wade? Will the kids be able to break free from the evil clutches of their ex-best-pal Buddy? You will have to watch the movie for yourself to get the answer to those questions and more! What I can tell you is what a genuinely good time I had watching this film. I already saw it twice in the theatres and would gladly go see it a third time because of how original this concept is. As any horror fan, I’m dying for new horror films. Not just the same old remakes and remasters that diminish the reputation of some amazing franchises that should have stopped making new iterations after the sequel. The concept is one of the most brilliant things I've seen done in horror cinema in such a long time. 2026 has been the year that the horror genre has proven why it’ll have longevity in the film industry. It is possible to come up with new concepts as long as you let the old ones rest.
The acting was brilliant for the children; most of them did fantastic jobs, and I’m so excited for the career this movie will bring them as they grow up. How effing cool it would have been to be in a horror movie like this as a kid. But the best actress award goes to Cristin Milioti, who played Grace. She ends up playing a second character in this movie, if you know you know, and if you don’t, seriously go watch the movie. Between both the characters, there wasn’t a single second I thought she was acting, and that is the mark of a talented actor. Lastly, the use of puppetry within the set made the kid show world feel so alive and vibrant, making it the perfect juxtaposition for the darkness that dwells within Buddy. Everything had a face on it. As someone with an active imagination, especially as a kid, I imagine inanimate objects having facial patterns. It was delightfully fun seeing the movie's visualizations of bringing those same objects to life, like Mr. Mailbox. Justice for Mr. Mailbox.
You can see how real children’s shows have inspired characters in this movie. There are numerous parallels: Thomas the Train and Charlie the Train, Zippy and Backpack, Mr. Mailbox reminds me of the mailbox in Blue's Clues, and of course the unicorn in the room has been inspired by the giant purple dinosaur we all know as Barney. If you’re a fan of comedies and slashers, this is your new favorite movie. There was limited carnage shown with the deaths that involved human beings; a lot of it was done off-screen. However, whenever one of the animated objects or puppets was getting wrecked in the It’s Buddy! Universe, that’s when the special effects department went all out with the gore. I never thought I’d see the day when gore and puppets would be written in the same sentence, but here we are. This movie lives in my Letterbox’d Top 5. If you all want to follow me there @shesinthecrypt I’ll be sure to follow you back. I love reading movie reviews as much as I love writing them!
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