In ‘Buddy,’ A Cuddly Unicorn Kills Kids Trapped in His TV Show. ‘Too Many Cooks’ Creator Casper Kelly Breaks Down His New Pop Culture Nightmare

Casper Kelly says his love of analyzing and dissecting pop culture started when he was very young.

“Back in the day, they had Mad Magazine, which had movie parodies and would deconstruct the movies, even the adult movies I couldn’t watch,” Kelly says. “I remember trying to make my own fake movie parodies with comics, although I don’t really consider what I do parodies. But I like having a structure that I can break in a surprising way.”

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Some of Kelly’s boldest projects have taken well-trodden tropes and run them through a series of funhouse mirrors, until they’re jagged and nearly unrecognizable. His 2015 Adult Swim viral sensation “Too Many Cooks” mimicked the seemingly endless opening credits of sitcoms, which got more and more surreal until a madman was let loose in the meta world. His sneaky 2022 feature “Adult Swim Yule Log” was a surreal parody of slasher films, and the sequel (2024’s “Branchin’ Out”) was an outrageous take on Hallmark holiday romances.

His newest work, “Buddy,” which debuted Thursday night at Sundance as part of the Midnight program, directly takes on Barney the dinosaur, recontextualizing the much-maligned ’90s kid show as a trap for children, who are killed by the titular unicorn if they step out of line or question their reality. The tactile sets of the world inside the TV show recall kids’ fare ranging from “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” to “Dora the Explorer.” The initial idea was pitched to Kelly, but initially, he was concerned it might draw too many comparisons to recent kids’ characters-gone-psycho films.

“It came from JD Lifshitz, one of the heads at BoulderLight Pictures, who was interested in doing some kind of horror movie in a world with a character like Barney,” Kelly says. “I felt like that territory had been trodden a bit with ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ or ‘The Banana Splits Movie’ or ‘Willy’s Wonderland.’ But when I hit on the idea of them being trapped in a TV show, that was interesting to me. I did an interview with SpectreVision, Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah’s production company, once, and they said, ‘Everything you’ve done has the theme of being trapped.’ It had never occurred to me, but now I keep thinking about it, and I forget about it. After the movie, I’m like, ‘Well, I’ll be damned. It’s about being trapped again.'”

Although “Buddy,” which Kelly co-wrote with Jamie King, is thematically linked to his work, it definitely has the opportunity to bring in a bigger audience. Key roles are filled by stars like Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon and Cristin Milioti, and while it is definitely one of the most ambitious and strange movies at Sundance, it’s easy to see it being a crowd-pleasing hit for those looking for something off the beaten path, which is new territory for a cult favorite like Kelly.

“This movie had financiers and a lot of creative producers who want this to be a theatrical movie,” he says. “Part of their aim is steering it in a way where it has my weirdness, but also perhaps is more accessible than some of my other work meant for late night at Adult Swim. So it’s trying to keep that blend, and I think we succeeded.”

While Kelly has sharpened his voice on scores of TV and film projects, he says that “Buddy” expanded his horizons and made him even more excited to tackle future projects.

“I learned so much on this movie,” he says. “For example, our DP Zach Kuperstein, who also worked on ‘Barbarian,’ has a very interesting process for blocking scenes and doing the shot list that involves outdated software that is in danger of not being updated anymore. I feel like I got a lot better at blocking scenes, rather than just doing the normal comedy ‘over the shoulder, wide shot’ and things like that. You can keep practicing and trying to get better, but every scenario is new. But it’s so addictive, and I want to make so much stuff. I’m just so excited.”