Sundance movie review: 'Buddy' gruesomely satirizes kids' TV, slashers

Buddy, which premiered Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival, is a fun horror comedy set in an unlikely milieu. A children's television show becomes a bloody death trap.

It's Buddy is a 1999 children's show centered on a person in an orange unicorn costume (Keegan-Michael Key) like Barney or the Teletubbies. Buddy sings songs with a cast of kids that teach them lessons like facing their fears.

Things start to go wrong when Josh (Luke Speakman) doesn't want to participate in an activity, so Buddy kills him off-camera. Freddy (Delaney Quinn) is suspicious of her friend's disappearance and Buddy only becomes more threatening over three episodes.

Production designer Anna Kathleen built a legitimate children's show. The set design is full of whimsy i  la Pee-Wee's Playhouse with a talking mailbox, trash can and backpack.

It is an effective satire of those shows that simplify morals for kids. Turning it into a slasher movie with Buddy stalking the kids turns the show into a funhouse hell.

Buddy is a far more cumbersome costume than Jason. Even Freddy Krueger, with all that makeup, is mobile once he's filming.

So seeing Buddy lumbering after the kids, who are trapped in a small soundstage, is hilarious. He still employs childish taunts while killing kids like a variation on a bully's "Why are you hitting yourself?"

Video glitches between episodes reveal more clues, and there is also a section in the real world. Grace (Cristin Milioti) is struggling to raise her family with an uncooperative husband, Ben (Topher Grace).

Buddy has his paws in this section, too. Grace gets ensnared in Buddy's world.

This detour impacts Buddy when the film returns to the tv show. There is enough emotion from the family section that it matters which kid survives.

The kids meet more disturbing characters when they explore the forest beyond the fence of their set. Designed in the same style, with jokes about such design techniques, the forest characters have fallen into just as much depravity as Buddy.

A plush serial killer is a strong enough hook to entice horror viewers. Writer/director Casper Kelly, who co-wrote with Jamie King, has even more dark twists on the children's show horror that shall not be spoiled.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.