Your Special Monster Friend

Children are held in thrall of a giant orange unicorn in 2026's Buddy. Here the potential of the creepy '90s live action children's show is realised, here the unspoken truth that Barney and Teletubbies were nightmares becomes the surface reality. It's not a comedy, it's a horror movie, but this is the finest comedic element of the film. The joke is that it's not a joke, it's the tacit acknowledgement that we all knew it was a nightmare, and yet we all played along.

The film begins in 4:3 and we meet the unicorn, Buddy, surrounded by adoring children who join him in songs with simplistic moral lessons. One little boy doesn't want to participate, preferring to read his book. After a couple attempts to get him to join in, Buddy finally murders the introvert. A little girl, Freddy, notices and gradually convinces the other children it's time to flee. So their adventure begins and as they wander the forest, the film expands the possibilities of simplistic, painted plywood sets with some shots reminding me of Night of the Hunter, which may have been a deliberate reference.

In the real world, we meet a mother, Grace, played by Cristin Milioti, whose enormous eyes are kind of hypnotic. That's incidental, though. She and her husband, Ben, played by Topher Grace, have two little boys. But she starts to feel like something's off, something's odd about the one empty chair at the dinner table.

Ben doesn't believe her, and the two have the familiar argument from a supernatural movie about one spouse who doesn't believe and one spouse who can't help but believe with every fibre of her being. Ben is one of the particularly insensitive sceptics and his attempts to placate Grace are effectively harsh.

The premise of the film reminded me a little of real world scandals in which beloved childrens' TV hosts have turned out to be guilty of physical abuse of some kind, or they're believed to have been. It kind of reminded me of The Magicians except, in that case, where the revelation was kind of a shock, in Buddy it's like acknowledging something that was right in front of us the whole time. Buddy doesn't just seem creepy, Buddy is creepy.

I appreciated the end of the film--even compared to everything else about it, it's a bold move, and seems like something Terry Gilliam might have done. I think my favourite character was Mr. Mailbox, a mailbox whose mouth is torn off by Buddy early in the film and spends the rest of the movie unable to move or speak or do much of anything else beyond looking terrified as he's carried around by the children in their attempt to escape.