Well, guess what I want to die in a fire.
If you’re new to this site, you should know that the trend of kids shows turned into subversive horror is one I’m long past over. Popeye and Winnie The Pooh are public domain? Turn them into horror movies! We want to make a new Banana Splits, but now the costumes are robots who want to kill everyone because their show was canceled. They’re already planning to snag the early version of Mickey Mouse now that the early shorts have started going public. I know you hate children, but do you have to be so blatant?
When it comes to original “kids” shows, I’m usually a little more relaxed. Oh, I’m still not a fan but I’m not as angry at Five Nights And Freddy’s and its various inspirations because while it still hates your childhood it’s not ruining someone’s childhood favorites. They just find it funny that toys are killing kids and each other, video games are run by satanic cults (literally and figuratively) that steal souls, and whatever the hell else they’re going to come up with next. These are originals and I’ll take them case by case. The Freddy Fazbear games are actually kind of interesting, though I think the dead kid souls being stuffed into robots, toys, and games is getting overdone. Try something different.
I can’t decide where Buddy, a horror comedy from the guys who made that Too Many Cooks video for Adult Swim, exists on the childhate scale based on the above scene (if YouTube still has it up. If it keeps them from turning Barney the dinosaur himself into a horror movie or whatever an “A24” style movie is, I’ll reluctantly accept it. (No, really, that was a plan. For all I know it still is.) Buddy is so clearly a Barney stand-in that the final trailer just straight up ripped Barney dialog even though Keegan Michael-Key is supposed to be the character in the movie and I doubt his Billy West or Dean Wendt impression is going to be that good. (I do my research.)
Now, you might wonder how anyone could see that and think it’s a good thing for kids, rather than yet another adultified “let’s make a child thing evil” parody? And yet, according to The Mirror‘s US site that’s exactly what happened in at least a few movie theaters. From Avenue Q to The Puppetland Murders, the idea of an adultified kids show concept isn’t new. I’m surprised Doctor Who never got there given Russel T. Davies ” make mundane things scary” motif from his first run. It’s meant to be comedy, or in the case of the Freddy Fazbear franchise inspired by the supposed fear of restaurant animatronics from the 1980s that I never saw from any kids on the rare occasions I was at the local Chuck E. Cheese. Said musical robots are gone and now it’s just a birthday game space with someone in a costume…I think. I haven’t been in a long time but it’s what I see in ads when the mouse isn’t a cartoon character.
So somehow parents looked at that and said it would be great for their kids? Was that the plan? Is this another version of those YouTube ads using kids characters to up the numbers of their creepy fetish videos? (Speaking of blatant hatred of childhood innocence.) No, it just sounds like parents realized the price for being lazy parents.
The supernatural horror-comedy film hit theaters on August 28 after debuting at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and has generated major buzz for its murderous children’s program character. Despite Buddy‘s R-rating, movie theater employees and cinemagoers took to Reddit to report seeing an unusually large number of kids during screenings of the new horror film, no doubt leaving some traumatized by the graphic violence unfolding on screen.
This comes after the new horror film Ice Cream Man had moviegoers ‘running out and vomiting’ amid mass walkouts.
You can check that story if you want. I’ll pass.
Buddy follows a group of kids trapped in a 1990s-inspired children’s television program, trying to escape the show’s murderous unicorn host, Buddy the Unicorn, voiced by Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Patton Oswalt, Clint Howard, Michael Shannon, Topher Grace, and Keegan-Michael Key.
Wait, more than one voice, or did they write something wrong? So was I wrong earlier and Milioti was Buddy’s voice? Someone who cares mention it in the comments, please.
The poster for the R-rated flick shows the orange unicorn staring from a static television screen, and some of the film’s previews warn about ‘bloody violence, some graphic content, language, all involving children.’
Okay, the movie’s rated R, the trailer is doing the “footage doesn’t match the audio” bit that shows the kids traumatized and in one clip in the final trailer Buddy is missing part of his mascot face, and nothing is ignoring the violence level of this movie about yet another slasher mascot. How little attention are these parents taking?
“While some of it is parents just not giving a s–t, part of me does wonder if there are at least a few cases of parents just looking at the poster, seeing the cuddly unicorn, and not investigating further,” one Redditor weighed in.
The one on the right, maybe, but if the theater had the one on the left (assuming I wasn’t fooled by some fan work), then it’s totally on the parents. On the other hand, unless there’s some spoiler there it wouldn’t match the tone they were going for. However, it would still require paying zero attention whatsoever either way. The staticy image of Buddy should still come off as uneasy. I’m sure there are people who just look at a movie poster to decide what to do on a Sunday afternoon with the family after church or something, but it should still say R on the signs and posters. If you do any kind of research on that computer box in your pocket called a smartphone you should be able to do some research to see if kids even want to see it. I totally believe that parents are not paying attention to their kids’ interests, even ignoring ratings on shows, movies, and video games that I wish was uniform across all three. (Use the MPAA rating system. We’re all used to it by now.) It’s one advantage I would have had on other parents because I’d probably be watching with them…since I already watch without them.
According to Bleeding Fool contributor Todd Fisher, this is hardly a new situation.
Moviegoers and theater employees said this kind of confusion has happened for years, often because adults see a cartoon, mascot, or familiar character name and stop paying attention.
“Some people just pay zero attention,” one person wrote while recalling parents who tried to take children to Bad Santa because Santa was in the title.
Another recalled a theater manager warning parents that “that Deadpool is not a movie for kids.” A former theater employee said parents also needed warnings about South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, explaining that “they thought cartoon = kids movie.”
The same issue surfaced last year when parents took children to Terrifier 3. Dexerto reported similar backlash, though horror fans were not impressed by complaints from adults who ignored an R rating.
I didn’t even have to watch the trailer! (And I didn’t.) If it’s still up and embeddable, this thing makes Pennywise (theatrical version) look like…
Hmm. Somehow he looked different in the book I had as a child. We didn’t get the show in Connecticut that I ever came across. Still, I totally believe there are parents that stupid. There are parents who take kids to more obvious not-for-kids movies because their movie wishes are more important than their kids. My parents paid better attention and they didn’t have the internet at all, nevermind in their pocket or pocketbook. There’s no excuse, really.
I could understand a kid coming across the poster in a streaming list, but that’s why they need “kids mode/lists” in the streaming app/website, to protect kids. Paramount needs to add that back into Pluto TV and put it in their own app if they want the same software for both services for this reason. The movie creators didn’t think about kids beyond “wouldn’t it be funny if we had kids trapped in a horror tale with a kids show mascot who is both kids show style AND a psychotic child kidnapping murderer?”. They wanted to make a subversive movie. What else is new? I have my concerns about stuff like this, but like I said, original properties I go case by case and I only know the trailer and clip I looked into. Yeah, I’m not thrilled. These days, if the mascot was actually the hero in these movies and games, THAT would be the real subversion no matter what target age group they went for.
So how much can you blame the people working in the theater? Could they do more to warn parents of what Buddy actually is? Probably. It’s like when that guy at the video store I couldn’t convince a violent anime–that said on the box that it wasn’t for kids and was graphic in visuals–thought I was an idiot because “cartoos are fer kidze” nonsense. It’s their job to be aware and this is hardly new for movies or games. On the other hand, there are plenty of parents who wouldn’t listen if they did, or were so convinced they could handle it as kids and so will their kids that they’d ignore them. Meanwhile, parents complained about a swear in Transformers: The Movie and I’d still take kids to that re-release this week. Sure, I’d hope they used the TV edit for the vocals on the swears, but it’s not like the industry cares that much about kids. The theater owner should be warning the staff…oh wait, IT’S RATED R!!!! SAYS “CONTAINS GRAPHIC VIOLENCE” ON THE POSTER AND IN THE TRAILERS! They shouldn’t have to because some dumbass parent is going to get mad. “Don’t tell me what to take my kids to see.” Then they end up seeing something that scars them for life.
The movie exists, it isn’t ruining an existing property, and outside of personal perspectives the idea of doing a kids show parody isn’t a sin against God and man or anything. I’m even curious to see an Avenue Q stage show, or would be if not for the current trend turning me off to the whole concept. I’m just tired of this bit. However, parents need to actually pay attention to what they’re taking their kids to see. It’s all their fault if they’re kids has nightmares because Barney haters wanted to make him evil and threatening kids and you were too lazy to investigate. Yes, the theater people should warn you…which they do with the R rating on the posters and signs. Yes, the movie distributor should make that clear…which is what trailers and promotional sites are for. They say “you can’t judge a book by its cover” but you also can’t judge a movie by its poster. The parents job is to watch out for this stuff and protect your kids. These parents failed…and it makes me wonder what else their kids are exposed to from people actually trying to hide what it is.
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