BUDDY (2026)

If Casper Kelly’s Buddy were simply a twisted parody of a certain type of children’s show, it still probably would have worked. Kelly, creator of the sublimely chaotic “Too Many Cooks” short, has a keen eye for taking benign imagery and tilting it just enough for us to notice something is off, just a little at a time, until before we know it we’ve descended into madness. The introduction of Buddy, an orange unicorn about the size of Barney the Dinosaur who similarly champions love, teamwork, and friendship, is so earnest that at first there are only the slightest signs that it’s even a parody.

A director of, let’s say, an Eli Roth competency could have made a lot of hay out of simply taking a genuine and good-natured children’s show and bloodying it up for our perverse enjoyment. And there’s a good bit of that in Kelly’s film. But he isn’t content to stop and let Buddy coast on its premise for the whole time.

Instead, he looks closely at what really might be disturbing about the Barney-type show at its core. The relentless toxic positivity. The mandatory fun. The fascistic foam rubber führer demanding love, teamwork, and friendship. What happens to the kids who aren’t feeling friendly? Buddy shows us, in graphic detail.

And then, just as we assume Kelly has reached the limit of the concept (admittedly, you’d think it more suitable to a short film), he gives us a second act that enriches the world of the story. We see how Buddy the unicorn becomes a catalyst for confronting abuse, gaslighting, grief, and especially the recent very real trend of YouTube algorithms targeting and terrorizing children.

But Kelly never lets his horror film turn into a moral lecture, and delivers an adrenaline rush of a third act that follows through on every promise of the concept and takes the world around Buddy to fascinating, terrifying, and delightfully surprising places. I’ve been pretty vague about the exact plot of the movie. I don’t even want to mention the cast: though there are some recognizable faces and voices, it might be best to discover them as you go. The child actors all give masterful performances and Kelly is remarkably deft at directing them through difficult emotional paths.

Those who are intrigued by the premise of Barney-gone-bad will be delighted at Buddy, but may be surprised that on top of the pitch-perfect emulation and devastation of the children’s show trope, there’s a much richer story to be told and a much more satisfying time to be had than it seems. Most movies like this are complacent and give you the minimum of what the trailer offers. This is different.

**** out of ****

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar! Part 1: THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (2025), Best Documentary Feature

We can tell what she’s doing right from the beginning. The repeated police calls and the carefully chosen words. Words that plant the seed of a pattern that’s completely hollow but might be enough to convince a judge or jury. Because she lives in a Stand Your Ground state, the perpetrator, Susan Lorincz of Ocala, Florida, commits her crime in full view of the police, who are benevolent but hobbled. We watch in horror as Susan, a white woman, weaponizes the substantial benefit of the doubt that the law grants her in order to eventually shoot and kill a Black woman in cold blood. She is not the only person to have done this, a horrific murder by any definition except Florida law’s. They all hum the same refrain. I feared for my life. I thought they were going to kill me. And so I aimed and fired.

Geeta Gandbhir’s film is constructed entirely (until the epilogue) out of police body cam, surveillance, local news, and court footage. No dot-connecting is necessary. Police arrive at Susan’s house as she complains that the local children, mostly Brown and Black, are playing on her lawn. She claims one child threw a lawn sign at her: dubious, but it’s the first piece in her puzzle that will lead to her “self-defense” plea. The neighborhood children are silly, funny, irritating in the way kids are. They include the four children of Ajike Owens, whose life would be cut short on Susan’s porch. The police calls continue. We hear how Susan transforms a mild annoyance into a mortal threat. It’s sociopathically methodical.

The police are skeptical of her claims, if not exactly wise to what she’s planning. Should they have been? I suppose so: their casual dismissal of Susan’s complaints and sympathy with the local children and parents might be suitable in a state without such a generous Castle Doctrine. They offer warnings—just keep them off her lawn so there’s no trouble, they say—that would be reasonable if the law were.

The night of horror arrives. Children are devastated as their mother is torn from the world. Everyone behaves as we would expect. The police do what they can. But exactly how much they can do is in doubt. The uphill battle that follows becomes steeper because the state law is fashioned to favor Susan and not her victim. The charge that’s filed is manslaughter, when it should have been murder. Even then, the privilege she’s grown accustomed to still holds. When she is arrested and charged, an uncommon grace is granted to her. Only because I had no more tears, I laughed at this moment: how else to respond to such calm patience when law enforcement has shot people in the streets for less?

The movie is punishing in its depiction of how frustrating the process of justice is. Every situation seems to favor the aggressor. The grieving family is given excuses until eventually they’re able to claw some response out of the system. The takeaway is that but for the efforts of the victim’s family, Florida state law (and by extension other states’ similar laws as well) makes murder very easy to get away with if you’re a certain kind of person. The movie’s ending offers a small relief. Very small.

*** 1/2 out of ****