Casper Kelly tells HTG how horror movie Buddy balances childhood nostalgia with absolute chaos

Published Aug 28, 2026, 9:15 AM EDT After graduating from Marist University with a degree in communications and journalism, Dan Girolamo has over 10 years of experience writing about entertainment and sports. Dan's work can be seen in various publications, including Digital Trends, SportsCasting, and Tom's Guide. Throughout his career, Dan has interviewed several high-profile filmmakers and creatives, including Brendan Fraser, Jamie Lee Curtis, Caitriona Balfe, Frank Grillo, Miranda Cosgrove, Jai Courtney, Chris Columbus and James Cameron. Dan joins How-To Geek as a Senior Editor. When he's not writing about entertainment, Dan is either watching a movie or praying for the New York Knicks to win a championship. Buddy might feature a bright orange unicorn on educational TV, but it's the furthest thing from a kid's movie. Imagine if Barney snapped on the set of his show and went full Ghostface from Scream. That's essentially what happens in Buddy, Casper Kelly's new horror comedy about the dark side of children's television. Casper Kelly finds a nostalgic sweet spot in Buddy The filmmaker subverts the slasher genre It's always a happy day for the kids on the show It's Buddy! They play games, learn new skills, and share some laughs. They even sing a few songs about daily chores. Everything changes when one kid refuses to play. That doesn't sit well with Buddy (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), who tries to change the young boy's mind. When that doesn't work, a violent Buddy kills the child. Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and Wade (Caleb Williams) realize something is wrong with Buddy, and when they try to get help, it only makes things worse. Soon, everyone who comes into Buddy's orbit feels his wrath, forcing the kids to pull off a daring escape. Buddy weaponizes the children's shows from the 1990s and transforms an educational program into a hellscape. The horror movie plays off nostalgia and subverts our expectations. How did Kelly balance nostalgia without fully exploiting it? When asked by How-To Geek's Dan Girolamo why he's "drawn to it," Kelly admitted that he's still trying to figure it out. Casper Kelly: How do I balance nostalgia? I don't know if I have a real intellectual underpinning behind it. There's a saying: if you want to know what a novel is really about thematically, the last person to ask is the writer. On some level, they often don't know, or they're working on it. Allegedly, Stephen King didn't really know what The Shining was about going dry. On some level, I'm going to say that. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to it. I've definitely done other things that are not nostalgic, but these are the ones that seem to cut through the most for an audience. Yeah, I probably need to go to a therapist to find out why I'm drawn to it. [Laughs] Nearly 30 minutes into the movie, Buddy steps out of his retro CRT television look and heads back into the real world, where we meet Grace (Cristin Milioti), a mother of two experiencing a midlife crisis. Despite a lack of support from her husband (Topher Grace), Grace embarks on an odyssey to determine whether she has forgotten about a third child, which leads her to Buddy's cruel new world. Credit: Roadside Attractions and Saban Films Kelly wanted the film to feel "claustrophobic" in the beginning before it cuts to Grace's world. "We had a version where we, the co-writer Jamie [King] and I, did try a version where we intercut the scenes, and it just didn't feel good," Kelly said. "Jumping back and forth, it didn't feel right. I wanted it to feel almost a little claustrophobic for those first 28 minutes. So it's almost a relief to get out of that. But then when you get out of it, you're confused, and you're like, "Well, how does this relate to anything?" It might be a little bit of 'it's just something I like to do.'" Casper Kelly still needed to figure out the music What's harder: songwriting or screenwriting? Credit: Roadside Attractions and Saban Films Kelly is probably best known for Too Many Cooks, the iconic short film from Adult Swim that parodied the opening credits from American sitcoms. Kelly took that musical background and applied it to Buddy, as he co-wrote the lyrics to the various children's songs in the movie. Kelly still believes that song lyrics come easier to him than writing a script. Has writing songs helped Kelly become a better screenwriter? Kelly explained: The hard part of writing screenplays is really the structure of the scenes and the character arc and the escalation. So, the song lyrics don't really help you there, unfortunately. Writing scripts does help, but it always feels like you're in a new territory because you're writing a new story. So it always feels like you're starting over from square one and having to learn it all over again. Buddy is in theaters on August 28, 2026. Buddy Release Date September 4, 2026 Runtime 95 minutes Director Casper Kelly