Movie Review: Buddy (2026) loves your insides
written and directed by Casper Kelly, written by Jamie King, starring Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, and Topher Grace
By the time Barney the dinosaur rose to prominence, I was well into lighting fires in the back yard and wondering why Kelly Jo Cochrane looked so good in her bathing suit. The dancing purple love machine was more the target of playground mocking than anything of substance. Buddy targets that mocking and asks the question "what if that mascot was a petty elder god bent on selfish destruction?"
The movie opens with three episodes of the Buddy the Unicorn tv show looking like it came from the VHS tape stored in someone's barn for the last decade. In the first episode, Buddy wants everyone to dance, but one kid, Josh,wants to read his book alone. Buddy talks to Josh off-screen and corrects him. Then we get the end song where everyone loves Buddy. Episode two, everyone is cleaning up and meeting the new girl Hanna when Freddy finds Josh's bloody book. Then they sing the end song and reset. The third episode, Freddy is sure Buddy is up to some shit. She tells her friends Wade and Oliver, and eventually the nurse, that Josh is not in Diamond City. It's Buddy's birthday, but Freddy gets her friends to escape on the train to Diamond City after they witness the nurse get a "special hug." Buddy kills the train, gets lit on fire by Freddy with cleaning chemicals, and gores Wade against a fence as the others climb over it to escape. The burn wounds on Buddy are grotesque and expose bone and raw flesh. The episode ends not with the love song and reset, but with the children escaping in the magical forest with Buddy in pursuit.
Cut to the real world where the movie switches to a normal aspect ratio and loses the fresh from the shitty direct to tape visuals. Grace lives with her husband and two boys, but feels something is missing. Seeing an empty chair at the dining table, she screams bloody murder and begins searching for a lost child. One psychic later, Grace is sure that the orange unicorn has something to do with her madness. Soon she finds herself sucked into the television and forgotten by her family.
From here on out, the story gets weird and dark and more violent. I've tried to remember a movie where more kids die on screen. The absurdity of the premise leans into the horror. Something about a half-burned mascot groping a live woman as she tends to his wounds and then going on to stab and eat children… I forgot how this sentence was going to end. All I see is Buddy leaning over a child saying "Why are you cutting yourself?" while raising and lowering a bloody knife.
Hard to say whether Cristin Milioti or the kids give a better performance. It's not a competition, but everyone is reaching for the best reaction to crazy shit so I feel I need to think about it. Milioti has become my favorite slightly unhinged mom actress filling the shoes of greats like Mary Ellen Trainor or Dee Wallace before her. Her raging against an orange unicorn gives as much joy as her raging against time loops in Palm Springs. All the kids seem to be having a blast covering themselves in their friends blood, attacking various mascots, and cursing. It's really nice to see.
When you see Buddy carve pieces of himself off to fit into a magical well, you will thank me. Best use of a mailbox in years.
Check it out.