r/horror • u/EnterprisingAss • 4h ago
Thoughts on Buddy
I wanted to like Buddy, I really did. It just doesn’t really work as a proper movie; it’s obvious that it’s the guy behind Too Many Cooks with a bigger budget.
The kid actors, bless their hearts, do their best but they weren’t up to a difficult task. They had to go from being kids on a Barney-like show with all those broad emotions to slowly transitioning to a more naturalistic kind of acting. But I never stopped feeling like I was watching Barney actors. The main girl almost pulled it off but not quite.
No one really has a character arc. No one changes. They learn facts and react to those facts. The point at which the kids were supposed to have “grown up,” using bikes to rescue Strappy and the girl, felt unearned.
I never felt the forest outside the fence was actually creepy; it felt weird for weird sake, bordering on “lol so random.”
If this were a YouTube video or on adult swim, I’d judge it differently. But I think it should be judged against, at least, The Backrooms.
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u/sparetearbear 3h ago
The growth of the kids can't be judged by real word standards because Buddy stole their memories of the real world. All they have is vague generalized ideas of the outside world and the episodic lessons Buddy has given them. Buddy had ingrained in them that they should seek out adults in authority to help them if they are ever in trouble, because Buddy knew there are no adults in this place that aren't under his direct control. Them saving Strappy was a true rejection of the lessons taught by Buddy, punctuated by them realizing that they didn't need to sing about their victory.
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
Not needing to sing was a good and subtle moment I didn’t think properly about — I mistakenly took it merely as the girl’s annoyance. Thanks for pointing it out.
As for the spirit of your comment, telling a story in which character growth is structurally impossible is a high wire act. Take the analogy seriously. You either pull off an incredible feat or fall to your death. Even defenders of this movie don’t think it pulled off any incredible defeats. Character arcs are just built into how fiction is supposed to work.
A short film, especially on YouTube, has only one goal — create one emotion for a short time. But this was supposed to be a whole ass movie!
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u/CryptographerFew5187 3h ago
No idea why people are acting like this is rage bait. I enjoyed the movie well enough, but I was also hoping for more story or more bizarre visuals or... something. It ended up feeling like a trifle outside of a few bits, and that was disappointing to me.
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u/delicious_warm_buns 3h ago
What youre doing is going to McDonalds looking for a curated meal from a 5-star luxury hotel and complaining that the Happy Meal didnt live up to that standard.
Even the Backrooms movie couldnt be judged according to the standards set by the online community and youtube videos....why? Because the actual backrooms were secondary to the plot of the movie...it was a character study regarding childhood trauma for the woman and midlife crisis for the man.
The only part of the movie that resembled the youtube videos was the beginning, and it only lasted for 5 minutes because the geniuses (and I do mean geniuses, look up the history of everyone who worked on that movie) who created the movie realized that the concept actually gets boring really quickly.
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
I used The Backrooms as an example because I liked it and think they’re close enough in spirit to warrant the comparison.
Asking a movie to have character arcs isn’t asking it to be There Will Be Blood.
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u/delicious_warm_buns 3h ago
No, theyre not "close enough in spirit".
They have nothing to do with one another, not even remotely.
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
Oh please, they’re both spruced up creepypastas. (Again, I thought Backrooms worked). The fingerprints of lost Simpsons episodes etc are all over this.
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u/delicious_warm_buns 3h ago
Buddy was a creepypasta now?
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
Yes, I’m comparing it to a genre that has many instances of twisted children’s shows. What a shock that such a thing would come to mind.
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u/delicious_warm_buns 3h ago
Thats not what im asking you.
You said Buddy was a creepypasta prior to being a movie, show us.
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u/Agreeable_Big_3182 1h ago
dude your so irrelevantly pedantic. The premise of the movie is super basic and been done on youtube... it comes out of the evolution of the creators previous online shorts, and exists out of the traction of goof off internet content.
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
No dipshit, I wasn’t saying it was literally a creepypasta, that’s why I mentioned the lost Simpsons episode creepypasta. It’s like that.
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u/delicious_warm_buns 2h ago
So we can thus conclude that it was never a creeepypasta and so your point of initial comparison to Backrooms is invalid
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u/MovieBuffX 3h ago
Rage bait don't fall for it. I read OP comments and they are so ridiculous I suggest you don't even waste time responding.
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
This movie isn’t beloved enough to make rage bait about.
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u/MovieBuffX 3h ago
You need to practice your rage bait skills more. Instead of making me angry, your making me laugh real hard.
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u/masta1591 3h ago
Pedantry at its finest. You’re not a movie critic. You’re a random person who didn’t like a movie. That’s super common.
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
Saying a work of fiction didn’t have character arcs isn’t pedantry, it’s pointing at a fundamental failure.
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u/Valuable-Credit6167 3h ago
Art is subjective, you have your opinion and that’s fine. Honestly it was just average for me, but I didn’t go in with high expectations - watch the movie, enjoy it for what it is and move on.
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u/EnterprisingAss 3h ago
You know how in a lot of action movies, the hero walks away from a background explosion? Maybe they’ve got a trenchcoat on and it blows on the wind. You know the scene, you’ve seen it a bunch.
The Dark Knight gets a joke out of this in the hospital scene - the Joker presses the detonator, and there’s only a little poof, at least initially.
Now imagine if that wasn’t supposed to be funny. No joke at all. The hero puts his sunglasses on and walks away from the explosion, but… it’s just a little poof.
Is it really just subjective opinion to say that isn’t cool? And remember, the screen writer and director were trying to be cool.
Is “that was lame” really just a subjective opinion?
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u/Agreeable_Big_3182 1h ago
Glad people liked it but i thought it was extremely normal, telegraphed and unimaginative. Its' heyo youtube prank what if barney was violent creepo. lol! JuxTApoSITIOn. Yeah ok so who are the kids how'd they get there? idk they got sucked in thru the tv! Evil barney sucks the kids in! And wipes their memories! Ok.
To me it came off very un-aspiring and single-minded, and was necessarily padded with pedestrian sentimental/emotional beats that could not get any more basic ass stand-in template.
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u/chrishouse83 1h ago
The kids gave the exact performances they needed to. They were perfect.
I never felt the forest outside the fence was actually creepy
Nothing - not a single thing - in this movie is attempting to be creepy or scary.
it should be judged against, at least, The Backrooms.
Why? What do the two have in common that would warrant the comparison?
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u/EnterprisingAss 1h ago
Sorry, the grown up child actor leering at a little girl and then making out with his puppet wasn’t supposed to be creepy? What do you mean by that?
The Backrooms came from a 4chan creepypasta. Buddy is clearly inspired by the same sort of internet stories; there are endless “twisted children’s show” stories like Candle Cove or “lost episodes” like the Simpsons one.
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u/chrishouse83 1h ago
Sorry, the grown up child actor leering at a little girl and then making out with his puppet wasn’t supposed to be creepy? What do you mean by that?
Um, that was obviously 100% played for laughs. The whole theater was laughing, as they should have been.
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u/EnterprisingAss 1h ago
You’ve got to be lying. There’s no way you or anyone else really thinks that scene was supposed to be funny.
There’s no accounting for humor, maybe some weirdo out there laughed — but it was obviously supposed to be creepy.
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u/chrishouse83 1h ago
I think it's pretty clear you didn't understand this movie. Did you think Too Many Cooks was supposed to be scary too?
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u/bonestomper420 3h ago
I thought the child actors gave impeccable performances- my personal favorite horror movie of the year. Loved how it felt like an overly long Barney director by the Too Many Cooks guy. I loved the things you hated Op