‘Buddy’ Reviews Roundup: “Side-Splittingly Funny” to “Misfire” [Sundance]

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Jan 23, 2026

One of the hottest films premiering at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival is Buddy, in which a brave girl and her friends must escape a kids’ television show.

The film hails from V/H/S/Halloween director Casper Kelly, who most notably directed the absolutely mental Adult Swim Yule Log and the gut-bustingly funny “Too Many Cooks” viral short.

Buddy, which starsCristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, and Patton Oswalt, had its World Premiere last night at the festival, which is celebrating its final year in Park City, Utah.

Here’s what critics are saying: 

“Buddy goes out on a psychedelic high, like an extraordinary experiment in mind control,” says Deadline‘s Damon Wise. “The ending is a headscratcher, but in the best possible, almost Lynchian way, hinting at dark, existential riddles that stay longer in the mind than its crowd-pleasing moments of gross-out comedy.”

The NY Post seemed to enjoy the brain candy, calling it  “a screwed-up new horror-comedy” that asks the age-old question, “What if Barney the Dinosaur was a bloodthirsty psychopath?” Writer Johnny Oleksinski adds: “The first 20 minutes were side-splittingly funny.”

“While plenty of blood and guts come spilling out in the process, there is surprisingly little in the way of genuine inventiveness to be found in this genre misfire,” writes Chase Hutchinson of TheWrap. “It earns a chuckle here and there, though it is never consistently funny enough to escape the painfully meandering path it seems insistent on going down.”

Christian Zilko of Indiewire says: “The ‘Too Many Cooks’ auteur appears to have finally received a budget worthy of his talents, and he makes full use of it by playing his greatest hits on a multiplex-worthy scale.” He adds: “Buddy is everything you could want from a midnight movie.”

“…one of the key weaknesses of Kelly’s sporadically amusing Buddy,” adds THR, “a variation on a theme that stretches its sketch-comedy idea to feature length by upping the gore and the demented detours but doesn’t go far enough to be as extreme or disturbing as it wants to be.”

Variety counters: “As a piece of satirical world-building, Buddy is exquisitely designed and executed.” They add:  “[Kelly] has a gleefully rich understanding of the inner insanity that can drive pop culture. Buddy is, at heart, a surrealist contradiction, a hate letter made with love.”

Also Read:Casper Kelly On Bringing His Killer Unicorn ‘Buddy’ To Life [Sundance 2026 Digital Feature]

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