Casper Kelly On Bringing His Killer Unicorn ‘Buddy’ To Life [Sundance 2026 Digital Feature]
I spoke with absurdist legend Casper Kelly from Park City, Utah, just ahead of the world premiere of Buddy, his debut feature screening in the 2026 Sundance Film Festival’s Midnight program. Kelly might be best known for creating Adult Swim’s dangerously funny and infamous Too Many Cooks informercial and the Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell series, yet his career in writing, comedy, and animation stretches back to when he helped shape one of the cartoon golden eras.
Horror fans may also recognize Kelly as the mind behind the 1999 Scooby-Doo Blair Witch parody, one of the most beloved and talked-about entries in the franchise’s history. Now, with Buddy, Kelly takes his well-sharpened cerebral instincts and pushes them even further.
The film centers on children trapped in a lost vintage television show, guided by a giant, orange, Barney-like unicorn who quickly begins slaughtering adults, kids, and puppets alike. Running parallel to the insanity is a different, more grounded reality where Cristin Milioti plays a suburban mother who becomes psychically entangled with Buddy’s world and the children who are desperate to survive it.
For Kelly, the idea for Buddy came from how he understood television as a child. “When I was a young kid and watched shows with actors, I thought they lived in the TV show. And I always wondered what happens if they don’t want to do the story that day? Or what if they’re sick? Do they still have to do it, or where do they sleep? We never see their bedrooms, so it just started leading me down a path.” That curiosity eventually evolved into something stranger and darker. “I think it was the idea of weaponized nostalgia and how we’re looking back a lot, but also just the feeling of my childhood idea about these kids in the show. Do they have to do this, that living in the show? Do they have to pretend?”
Landing the film’s killer lead, A-lister Cristin Milioti, came down to adding a personal touch. “With Cristin, I wrote a letter to her. I think she has mixed feelings about horror, but she liked this, and so I just wrote a letter why I thought she would be great for the part and why I liked her, and also trying to just make her feel like I’m not an evil douchebag and we’ll have a good time.”
Yet Kelly doesn’t see the balance between comedy and horror as something he consciously calibrates. Instead, he points to filmmakers whose voices naturally cut across tones. “I am drawn to doing something that’s even more different tonally. I read in interviews that for Punch Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson was apparently really trying to make an Adam Sandler movie … hence the plunger … but it instead turned into a hybrid of an Adam Sandler movie and a dreamy Paul Thomas Anderson movie. It’s just going to come out that way.“
Kelly’s relationship with horror started early. When asked which film ruined his childhood, his answer was immediate. “It was The Omen. I was really young and walked in when my parents were watching it on VHS. I remember one woman in it says, ‘It’s all for you, Damien,’ and then she jumps to her death. I didn’t even understand the concept of suicide.” That moment stayed with him. “For some reason, my dad explained it all to me, and I was really young. That freaked me out. The whole ‘what happens if a devil got in my brain and made me do that?’ That would be horrifying!”
When it comes to recent horror that leaves an impact, Kelly points to a Sundance midnight alumni film that continues to haunt him. “While I really loved Heretic, I think I’m going to go with I Saw the TV Glow. That f*cking ending is horrifying! It haunts the sh*t out of me. That movie is a banger.”
As for his own dark works, Too Many Cooks remains the project most people associate with his name. “I probably get asked about Too Many Cooks the most, but there was a time where that Scooby-Doo Blair Witch thing… all the people that saw that when they were 10 became of an age and they had podcasts.”
That viral Cooks moment changed his career trajectory. “It gave me traction. Something people could hang their hat on. ‘Oh, the Too Many Cooks guy.’ They’d have the meeting with you. It really boosted my career.”
Kelly also sees a clear link between comedy writers and horror as a natural pipeline. “I think maybe it’s partly anxiety. A lot of funny people are naturally anxious. That’s where the comedy comes from, and that can also be where fear comes from.” For Kelly, horror’s strength is its flexibility.
“Horror in general is a great genre that can accommodate so many styles. The fact that Weapons and I Saw the TV Glow and Sinners are all considered the same genre is wild. It’s like a good base. You can do all kinds of stuff.”
Kelly’s Buddy premieres in Sundance’s 2026 Midnight lineup and is sure to have wider audiences freaking soon.
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