(L-R) Topher Grace, Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Casper Kelly, and Keegan-Michael Key pose with the character Buddy at the “Buddy” Premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at Library Center Theatre on January 22, 2026 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
By Adam Silverstein
Imagine your favorite cuddly kids’ TV character growing up — not mellowing out, not getting wiser, but turning into an axe-wielding nightmare. That’s the queasy, thrilling premise of Buddy, director Casper Kelly’s gleefully unhinged Midnight selection that premiered on the first night of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and sent the Library Center Theatre into a collective spiral.
The room is packed — cast members scattered through the audience, puppeteers squeezed into rows. Midnight screenings always promise something strange, but Buddy still manages to catch people off guard. Gasps ripple. Nervous laughter breaks out, then abruptly stops. By the time the film fully tips into horror, the crowd is gripping armrests like it’s a ride they can’t get off.
Kelly, who co-wrote the film with Jamie King, opens in familiar territory: a hyper-saturated ’90s-style children’s TV show, anchored by Buddy, a bright orange unicorn designed to teach kindness, sharing, and emotional regulation. The tone is aggressively wholesome — sing-song voices, simple morals, soft lighting — until it isn’t. The smiles linger too long. The music curdles. Buddy’s comforting presence begins to feel threatening. When he finally snaps, the transformation is as absurd as it is terrifying.
At the center of the film is Cristin Milioti’s Grace, a mother quietly coming apart. She and her husband (Topher Grace, finely tuned between concern and disbelief) have two children — but Grace becomes convinced there’s a third. Milioti plays the unraveling with unsettling commitment, channeling the nervous energy that made her Black Mirror turn so indelible.
The emotional weight of the film rests on its young cast, particularly Delaney Quinn as the frightened but determined girl trapped inside the children’s show. Quinn is excellent — wide-eyed and brave — grounding the chaos with genuine fear. The child actors are impressively natural across the board, which only deepens the horror; these kids aren’t cartoons, they’re reacting to something deeply wrong.
And then there’s Buddy himself. Voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, the unicorn shifts from saccharine cheerleader to axe-wielding monster with unnerving ease. The effect is grotesque, funny, and genuinely creepy. This is very much not a film for children, and the audience knows it.
The crowd response becomes part of the experience. People shriek, then laugh, then go silent. Every new escalation is met with audible shock. Buddy is trippy and disorienting, but it’s also unexpectedly emotional, finding moments of sadness and tenderness amid the carnage.
During the post-premiere Q&A, Kelly cites The Shining as an influence. He cheerfully refers to Buddy as a “Barney horror movie,” adding that making it revealed things about himself he didn’t know were there. Milioti, laughing, admits she found the film “really light and moving.” She pauses. “I don’t know what that says about me.” The room erupts.
Topher Grace gets the biggest applause when he cuts through the moment with a blunt reminder: “It’s not IP. It’s not a sequel or a reboot. It’s fucking original!” Keegan-Michael Key calls the film “traditional storytelling, just done in a way we’ve never, ever seen before.”
Then, just when the night seems complete, Buddy himself appears — the full-size unicorn stepping into the theater. The audience doesn’t know what hit them.
Buddy is weird, wild, and deeply unsettling — a Midnight movie that earns its reputation and then pushes past it. If it’s asking whether love is all you need, the answer is an emphatic no. Sometimes love twists. Sometimes it sharpens its teeth.
