A Non-review by Professor Popinjay
(2026)
MAJOR SPOILER WARNING FOR THIS FILM. I PRETTY MUCH GO THROUGH THIS ENTIRE FILM WITH A FINE TOOTH COMB POINT FOR POINT. BASICALLY, YOU CAN EITHER WATCH THE MOVIE OR READ THIS BLOG AND YOU WILL HAVE THE SAME EXPERIENCE, I AM THAT THOROUGH. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Sorry it’s been a minute since my last post but this film got me thinking and, if a film can do that, it deserves analysis.
One of my kids brought this film to my attention. They absolutely HAD to go see it but needed me to attend with them on account of their age and its rating. I wasn’t overly interested at first but I think I actually enjoyed it more than my kid did.
I think this was in part because my kid was hoping for another Backrooms (2026) experience but I was enjoying the nostalgia of old Barney episodes.
When Barney came out, I was at an age where it was cool to despise him. Not only was it programming for kids much younger than myself, there was something unsettling about the show and others like it. There was never anything sinister or underhanded going on as far as we knew, but there was an uncanny artificiality with the staunch, well-behaved, relentlessly enthusiastic, constantly smiling, impeccably dressed children.
And it wasn’t always the same kids. They’d switch out occasionally without warning or explanation. What happened to them? Where did their replacement come from and why did the others never mention the previous kid and act like they’ve always known the new one? That wasn’t important, apparently.
But these questions remain and, without answers, the forum is open for speculation. The film Buddy speculated something quite sinister indeed… and enjoyably unsettling.
It’s easy to read about the events of the film Buddy and be utterly disgusted. On paper, the idea of kids coming to an untimely end is beyond horrific. It’s a line even the worst horror movies do not cross. While I certainly do not advocate for it, this is not the first time an audience was left to wonder as to the actual fate of certain children in a film. Willy Wonka lost a kid in every room they visited. Five nights at Freddy’s (2023) even dared hint at the notion. Krampus (2015) had a kid or two unceremoniously devoured whole.
But all those films have something in common with Buddy. They are each presented in a fairly tasteful and even comedic way. We don’t see the first kid get offed. It happens off screen while we watch the hilariously horrified reaction of a goofy sentient mailbox. Even when a couple other kids get theirs (one of whom was just ASKING for it) they’re quickly consumed with nary a hint of gore.
As for a couple of adults in the film… graphic campy horror abounds. Yet it’s still done in a semi goofy, dark humor kind of way.
Keegan-Michael Key plays the titular character, an orange furry pear-shaped unicorn with a yellow mane. Aside from being a furry unicorn, the only other attribute Buddy doesn’t share with a particular U.S. president is a large purple heart on his belly so far as I know. I don’t beleive the presence of a purple heart implies an injury in combat in this case but I do think it significant regardless.
The casting of Key implies director Casper Kelly wanted someone who understood comedic timing and horror at the same time. Considering Key’s repertoire, a better choice for this role there was not.
A little bit of the premise: There seems to exist an early 90’s kids show with Buddy the unicorn at the center of it. So long as everything is going peachy, kids on the show sing the “I Love Buddy” song, credits roll and everything resets for a new episode. One day a kid shows up who is more interested in reading his book than participating in the happy pastimes buddy orchestrates. This seems to irk Buddy who, while remaining polite for a while, grows more and more insistent that the lad join in the fun. Eventually, the boy becomes angry as does Buddy. We don’t see what happens but we sure do hear it.
From here this fantasy world begins to unravel with Buddy gaslighting, hiding evidence, and killing anyone and anything (funny sentient household items) who threatens to expose Buddy’s murderous ways.
Eventually some kids escape the immediate set and, while they still seem to be in this strange artificial fantasy world, reality begins to set in for the kids. They start swearing (mildly), they begin to wonder about things like night and day and going to the bathroom, all things they realize they haven’t thought about in a very long time. One girl, named Freddy, begins to remember her mom.
Suddenly the film shifts to the real world where a mother of two begins to feel like something is dreadfully missing from her family. She feels between her youngest and oldest children, there had once been a third child that she strangely has forgotten about and she desperately wants to know where that child is.
More humor than horrific but definitely not without its horrific moments, director Casper Kelly sets this mascot horror head and shoulder above the rest (of which there are many) by creating a deeper lore behind all of this. Some might consider the insertion of sights and events that raise unanswered questions simply a means of creating intrigue for a sequel. Well, it’s worked wonders on me. Afterall, isn’t that part of a filmmaker’s job, making it interesting enough to leave the audience wanting more?
I was so intrigued, I listened to three different YouTubers on my way home from the theater try to explain reasons behind what they saw at the end of this film and so far one thing is clear, no one knows anything.
A sullen uncooperative kid may irk Buddy, but nothing irks me more than people who ask a question of me and then stand there and speculate without any actual knowledge as to the answer while I wait impatiently for them to shut up so I can answer them! And 10 times out of 10, every speculation they present is 100% wrong.
I don’t want to speculate as to what’s really happening in this film like everyone else is doing. What I will do however, is present the facts here as they were presented to the audience. Perhaps after assessing the facts, an obvious conclusion can be made within the confines of what we know. But I’ll probably leave speculation up to you.
Major spoiler warning for the following section.
-Buddy is not a human in a costume. That furry orange pear shape is his actual body. We also eventually see his true form, a huge spike covered demonic unicorn monster.
-Buddy is very concerned with being loved and having the kids sing the “I Love Buddy” song to reset the day. The longer the “episode” goes without resetting, the more agitated, frantic, and terrifying Buddy seems to become.
-Josh, the sullen uncooperative boy is reading a book called “A Wrinkle in Reality”.
-Buddy has zero compunction about violently taking out anyone and anything that might shatter the fantasy world he lives in. He does not hesitate to lie to and gaslight anyone who may be having suspicions as to his deeds.
-The further the kids (Freddy, Hannah, and Oliver) get from the “park” where the “show” takes place, the more realistic the kids’ mentality becomes, even regaining lost memories.
-Freddy made sure to take the sentient mailbox with her when she and the other kids escaped. Special emphasis was given to “feeding” a letter to the mailbox. The letter was addressed to Josh who supposedly resided now in Diamond City. But Josh died right? Right? Or did he?
-Buddy was VERY concerned about the kids actually going to Diamond City via the sentient train. Diamond City is found to be just a tiny model in forced perspective at the borders of this fantasy world where reality seems strongest , but would the kids have actually been transported to an actual Diamond City if they had gone via the train? Sorry, that’s dangerously speculative.
-The kids meet George, a kid from a 1950s iteration of the show, along with a sentient marionette named Willie (reminiscent of Howdy Doody). George has grown into an elderly man outside the park but apparently still has a child mentality or his sanity has dissipated. Probably a combination of the two, not to mention the hallucinogenic flower petals.
-Willie explains that Buddy became enraged when a child in the 50s sang a mean un-loving song to Buddy.
-George says Hannah’s hair is pretty which, considering George’s infantile mentality, probably isn’t an inappropriate gesture per sé. However the action DOES seem to make Hannah uncomfortable. If a responsible adult was present, I’d expect they’d feel compelled to instruct George to keep his hands to himself. That having been said, the gesture DOES incite the wrath of the puppet who exclaims “Isn’t my love enough for you, George!?!” at which point George and the puppet start wildly making out. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here. I don’t think I want to know. Rest assured though, the kids seem safe from anything unsavory aside from the threat of impending violence from a murderous unicorn.
-Freddy is the middle child from the family in the real world.
-The father and other kids in the family do not seem to grasp the concept of a pet. None but the mother seem to remember ever having a fish before.
-Freddy seems overly compassionate for all living things she encounters, including some fish.
-The mother seems acutely aware of her kids being on devices, insisting they have none at the dinner table nor just before bed.
-The mother, Grace, is not taken seriously by her husband who even seems to resent her disturbing concerns as an inconvenient and unnecessary preoccupation.
-The medium hired by Grace inspects the electrical outlets in the father’s office, asking if the room had always been an office. This annoys the father considerably. During the seance, it’s on a TV in this same room the Buddy show turns on.
-The father, Ben, is very standoffish with the medium. Possibly nervous?
-Grace can find no information about the Buddy show anywhere. It is as if it never existed.
-When Grace is sucked into the TV, no one can hear or see her. When she’s finally all the way in, the whole room changes to reflect one devoid of her influence. As if the father has been a single dad for years.
-Grace becomes the new nurse on the “show”.
-Buddy becomes inappropriately sensual with Grace and seems irritated, even threatening, when Grace redirects and yet he just leaves silently. The tension is palpable.
-In the well, the children encounter a yellowish unicorn with a faded sun on his belly. He is seemingly enslaved at the bottom of the well, forced to create props and sentient items for the “show”.
-Through the prop room, Freddy escapes into what appears to be a Catholic School (indicated by posters and displays on the wall) devoid of any students or teachers. All the doors are locked.
-We see a room with multiple mailboxes similar to the one Freddy continues to carry with her. These mailboxes have hearts drawn on the side with “Step 1”, “Step 2”, and “Step 3” written on the sides, respectively.
-We see another room with floating brains or heads and electrodes and a looping video of the Buddy show playing. (Honestly, I blinked and missed this scene so can’t describe it exactly. There was a lot going on. I read about it later.)
-There was a mural on the wall featuring three unicorns, Buddy on the left, Benny on the right (a yellow unicorn with a sun on his belly whom we encountered in the well), and Bobby between the two of them (a blue unicorn with a yellow star on his tum whom we have not known about).
-Grace’s husband is also named Ben. Coincidence? I think not… but I don’t know why.
-Past Mailmen and Nurses are pictured on the wall of the school and there are a great many of them, possibly going as far back as the 1940s (when Television first started to gain in popularity?). Did Buddy kill all of them? Were all these adults a parent of a kid in the show? Why were they each honored with a framed portrait? Nurse Nancy and Mailman Miles (the two cast members whom Buddy killed in this film) are already pictured here. Miles was killed only moments before the photos are shown.
-The final room was a gymnasium repurposed. In it was a looping projection of the Buddy show. Across from the projection was a wall of televisions each showing a different kid sitting on a couch in a different house. Each kid is alone, presumably watching the Buddy show. One kid gets off the couch and puts his hand on the screen and his hand comes through the screen. Freddy pushes his hand back in. She finds a certain screen with no one in it and decides to push all the way through into presumably the real world.
-On the other side, Freddy finds that the once sentient backpack and mailbox she endeavored for so long to protect and care for have turned into regular inanimate objects which makes her very sad.
-Freddy finds herself in the house of a Hispanic family. An adult male enters the house and asks in Spanish, “Who are you?”
And that’s it. The end. So what have we learned?
I’ve seen a lot of theories which may or may have some level of inspiration in them. Some conclude the symbols on the various unicorns’ bellies are significant, implying Bobby was the original star of the show, Buddy needed Love and became jealous of the star of the show, and Benny needed sunlight so Buddy keeps him weak in the well away from the sun. No idea where Bobby is. Dead? Alive? Who knows? But strange that Freddy’s dad is named Ben.
The scene in the empty school is such a hodgepodge of mysteries, speculations are wild and likely highly inaccurate. But it seems this is the place new children are collected for the show. Buddy apparently doesn’t usually get into this place. He had to drastically alter his body shape to get down the well. There seems to be some kind of testing or monitoring going on. The “step 1”, “step 2”, and “step 3” mailboxes seem to indicate there are different phases in this process or the show itself has phases we have not seen yet. And finally, Buddy doesn’t seem to be directly involved in this processing, implying others were possibly once involved in setting all this up.
The photos of mailmen and nurses are fascinating. The fact that Mailman Miles is already pictured there despite just having been killed moments before might imply one of two things: either the photos appear by some magical means, or (more likely) the photo was hung up when he first arrived in the show. But by whom? Did he hang it up himself, the last in a long line of adults trying to save these kids?
I have other questions. As mentioned before, some speculate Buddy put Benny in the well to keep him weak and enslaved, shackled to a work bench. If these unicorn things are roughly the same shape and Buddy can’t get down the well normally, how did he force Benny down there and who shackled Benny to the work bench?
In the scene with George and Willie the puppet, everyone ate the flower petals but only the children seemed to be affected with hallucinations? How were George and Willie not affected? Granted, Willie is just a sentient marionette so who can say how drugs would affect him.
Some have argued that this whole film is simply allegory for child neglect and abuse and the events and mysteries should not be considered part of any sensible connected narrative. While there are certainly films like that, in the case of Buddy there definitely is a connected narrative. There’s no reason it can’t be allegorical AND have a narrative that ultimately will make sense as the story progresses. Director Kelly admits there are many questions posited in the film which DO have answers. Those answers are just not in this film because he believes letting the audience speculate is part of the fun.
As far as allegory: Yes, there are definitely underlying themes of neglect and abuse. However, even stronger I think is the notion that we as a society are alienating ourselves into the false reality of our devices; media that lies to us, gaslights us, and makes us feel guilty for not paying attention to it. We are willfully feeding this demon, even handing our kids over to it because we are too consumed ourselves to bother with them. Ironic that I should mull on and write about this movie on my phone for a full week. Did I leave my kid at the theater? No, they’re right next to me. Okay, phew! Contrarywise, when we turn our backs on this false reality, the more engaged in actually reality we become and we can finally empty our bladders on some sentient hallucinogenic flowers.
So in the spirit of fun as per the Casper Kelly’s wishes, here’s my conclusions based on what we know (without a hint of speculation):
Buddy has been possessed by a demon who feeds off of the “love” and attention of neglected children like a drug. This demon has been around as long as neglect has been a thing. When televisions started raising our kids, this form of neglect became rampant. Eventually some organization figured out how to appease/trap Buddy while possibly working to figure out a long term and final solution.
I think this organization (now possibly completely extinct) has been waiting for a particularly compassionate kid to become aware of the danger in this pocket dimension of a “show” and get out with knowledge and hopefully evidence of Buddy and his victims to show to the real world.
Freddy escapes with the mailbox which contains a letter addressed to the deceased Josh, whom some parents in the real world will have all but forgotten. What happens to Buddy when more parents are made aware of their missing children? What happens to Buddy when the flow of neglected children stops entirely?
That’s my conclusion.
And thus I conclude.
Poster art!
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