Ticketworthy - Buddy

Entertainment has always been an imitation industry. Whenever someone creates something that people enjoy, you can bet that it won’t take long for the copycats to spring up. That is exactly what happened when the Five Nights at Freddy’s video game launched in 2014 to both commercial and critical success. Almost immediately the video game industry became filled with “mascot horror” games, where the villains were childhood icons doing horrible things, and films weren’t far behind. The genre is now thoroughly saturated, and most entries come and go without making a splash anymore. The novelty wore off some time ago. That makes it all the more surprising that Buddy manages to stand out as much as it does. It isn’t breaking the mold, it doesn’t really add anything to the genre, and it isn’t particularly innovative. It just gets so many of the details right and comes together so effectively that it manages to be one of the best movies about a killer children’s TV character I’ve ever seen.

The story follows a group of children, led by a girl named Freddy (Delaney Quinn), who find themselves in the world of a children’s television program called It’s Buddy! The titular host of the show is a huge orange unicorn who seems dedicated to teaching the children right from wrong and making them feel loved. However, the kids start to realize that they have no memories of lives before Buddy. When some of them start to go missing, the others realize that Buddy (Keegan-Michael Key) isn’t what he seems, and the survivors must escape his fantastical world.

So much praise needs to be given to the cinematography and set design for this movie. The It’s Buddy! set is a bright, cheery, almost laughably perfect recreation of the Barney and Friends set from the 1990’s, so much so that it almost forces you to suspend disbelief. Anything can happen there, because it’s just whimsical and campy enough that nothing seems out of place. Seeing it later covered in blood is suitably horrifying. In addition, the swapping of aspect ratio to make the film look more modern whenever the kids leave the main set is a wonderful touch. It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but it’s precisely what the film needs to do, and it executes it well.

Most of the characters in the film are children and, as far as acting goes, you get what you get. There is a certain leeway that has to be given because they are meant to be portraying the kind of child-actors found in children’s television shows, so some of the stiffness and awkwardness might be intentional. Still, the acting is far from the best part of the film. The two exceptions to that, though, are the two leads. Key, who only lends his voice to Buddy, is so wildly unsettling. He brings the manic energy you’d want from a Barney knock-off, but with a constant layer of menace just underneath the surface. It’s truly an upsetting performance in the best possible way. Opposite him, Delaney Quinn is simply fantastic. She nails the wooden acting style required for the It’s Buddy set, while being able to turn it off once the illusion breaks and demonstrate real fear, sorrow, and determination. It’s a shockingly mature performance from a young actress, and I cannot wait to see where she goes from here.

The performances and design of the It's Buddy! segments are so good, in fact, that my one big complaint about the film is that it tries to do more than that, for some reason. There’s a strange section in the middle of the movie where it jumps to the real world and follows Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace as a couple who have lost and forgotten one of their children. It technically connects to the rest of the story, but I’m not sure I can convey to you how much this segment amounts to basically nothing and these characters do not at all matter. The film would have been fine without them, and I’m not sure why the plot had to grind to a halt in the middle just to introduce them.

Even with the odd aside in the real world dragging the plot down, the overall experience remains really great. The script is tight and wastes almost nothing, the performances are stellar in the places they need to be, the idea is fun and clever enough to keep you engaged, and the actual horror and kills are all pretty creative and fun to watch. I’m not sure what else you could ask for from a movie like this. For all his violence, Buddy constantly wants you to know that he loves you. If I’m being honest, I kind of love Buddy too.