Back in the ’90s, there was a show on PBS called “Barney & Friends”. The titular Barney was a big purple dinosaur who was an imaginary friend to a rotating cast of young children. Together, they sung songs and played games and told stories in the interest of teaching kids about compassion and empathy and the power of imagination.

Everyone hated it. No joke, EVERYONE hated it. Barney was the subject of playground taunts and jokes and songs that qualified as hate speech. Don’t tell me I’m exaggerating, I was there. I vividly remember “If you like Barney, you’re gay” as a ubiquitous playground insult among young children growing up in the homophobic ’90s. Literally everyone from grade-schoolers to radio shock jocks to the freaking Animaniacs took turns devising the meanest, most disgusting, most outrageously offensive takedowns against an imaginary purple dinosaur like it was a new Olympic sport.

Inevitably, Barney succumbed to oblivion. And the millennials who grew up with him became adults with children of their own. In the process, we’ve seen a fascinating equal/opposite reaction.

While Barney still hasn’t seen any resurgence in popularity, a number of other PBS childhood favorites did. Granted, Sesame Street and Mister Rogers also saw their own share of off-color jokes and foul rumors over the years, but both shows had a subtle edge to them that Barney didn’t have. (If Barney ever talked about topics like war, death, or racism, nobody ever talks about it.) By design, Barney was completely devoid of hard edges, so soft that he couldn’t even stand up to verbal abuse from a kindergartner.

Meanwhile, the likes of Bill Nye, Square One, Wishbone, and the Carmen Sandiego shows were all educational in a way that challenged their audiences to be smarter, something Barney and his friends never really attempted. And none of Barney’s PBS contemporaries — not even Sesame Street! — talked down to their audience with such consistently patronizing condescension like Barney did.

Back to the point, we’ve seen a renewed appreciation for Sesame Street and the late Mister Rogers among millennial parents and their young children. At the same time, we’ve seen the ubiquitous rise of new childhood icons like Bluey and Miss Rachel. Parents and kids love them because of their lessons in empathy and imagination, as did Barney. Except that unlike Barney — and like Mister Rogers — those lessons of compassion come bundled with the honest understanding that it takes bravery to be kind in a cruel and unfeeling world. (Incidentally, this is also a theme we’ve seen numerous times in recent media for older audiences. Ted Lasso comes to mind, ditto the live-action Cinderella remake.)

At the same time, we’ve seen a nascent subgenre of horror that makes direct use of the colorful childlike aesthetic so iconic to shows like Barney’s. Willy’s Wonderland comes to mind, ditto for Mr. Crocket and the “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” webseries. In horror video games, we’ve got Choo-Choo Charles, Amanda the Adventurer, Poppy Playtime, etc. And of course we’ve got Five Nights at Freddy’s dominating the subgenre in various media.

So here’s Buddy, a nostalgia-fueled fever dream in which our victim pool fights for survival against a homicidal Barney pastiche. How crazy does it get? This is the debut feature of writer/director Casper Kelly. The same guy who wrote/directed goddamn “Too Many Cooks“. Buckle up and brace yourselves, folks.

Buddy (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) is the star of a ’90s children’s show so obscure that no trace of it exists anywhere online. Buddy himself is an orange unicorn toy that comes to life when children call his name. Long story short, the film opens with a few episodes of Buddy’s show in quick succession, and it becomes increasingly obvious that something is frightfully wrong with him. A few kids are lucky enough to escape the set of the show and we’re off to the races from there.

At this point, the plot diverges into two tracks, each with its own “final girl” protagonist. On the one side is Freddie (Delaney Quinn), the girl who first realizes that Buddy may not be as friendly or as honest as anyone wants to believe. On the other side is Grace (Cristin Miloti), who’s recently been overcome with a strange kind of melancholic madness that somehow ties back to Buddy.

How do the two plotlines converge and affect each other? Well, it’s only a 100-minute movie and Grace doesn’t even show up until 20 minutes in. It won’t take you long to find out.

Then we have the rest of the cast.

• Topher Grace makes a brief appearance as Grace’s depressingly unhelpful husband.
• Caleb Williams, Luke Speakman, Tristan Broders, and Madison Skyy Polan all get varying degrees of runtime as the other kids inhabiting Buddy’s world.
• Clint Howard and Michael Shannon (!!!) briefly appear as a couple of strangers who may or may not be trustworthy.
• Patton Oswalt voices a strangely helpful backpack.
• Eric Bauza and Jimmica Collins voice a few other characters.

If it sounds like I’m skimming over the entire cast, I’ll admit that’s partly to avoid spoilers. But mostly it’s because there’s not much dimension to any of the characters.

Buddy himself is pretty straightforward: He’s an abusive and mendacious narcissist who demands unconditional love and loyalty. A transparent allegory for an abusive father figure. Granted, it’s probably for the best that the film never goes into detail regarding what exactly Buddy is or where he came from or how any of this works. The unfortunate drawback is that we learn pretty much everything there is to know about him in the first half-hour and there are no real surprises after that. Except for how far he’ll go to capture and/or kill his prey, which does admittedly get pretty damn shocking.

Likewise, with the aforementioned exceptions of Freddie and Grace, none of the characters have much of any depth. If any of them grow or contribute thematically in any significant way, it’s usually right before getting killed off. All that really matters here are Freddie and Grace, to the point where Buddy is only really important as an obstacle for them to overcome.

What we’ve got here is an allegory about naive helpless children learning to stand up for themselves against a toxic psychopath who’s done everything possible to keep them dependent on him. It’s sweet, but the film seems to imply that Barney and his “children’s television host” ilk are abusive parental figures. That seems like a bit of a stretch.

If I squint and tilt my head, I can kinda see the point that kids should turn to each other for emotional fulfillment, and not to imaginary characters. Come to think of it, Buddy’s idea of love is strictly one-way, not unlike the relationship between viewers and their TV shows. Even so, there’s a sense that the point could’ve been made more clearly.

Because first and foremost, this movie was focused entirely on tone. This is a movie specifically and exclusively designed to find new batshit twists and turns to show how much more demented we can get. I hate to lean on “Too Many Cooks”, but there really was nothing like it until the mad genius who created it expanded that breed of insanity to feature length.

Here’s the problem: “Too Many Cooks” was only ever built to be an 11-minute short film lampooning as many ’80s-’90s sitcoms and TV shows as possible. And it does so with an efficiency that could only be possible with weapons-grade insanity. The end result is a short film that consistently rewards repeat viewings because of all the jokes and details tucked away into every corner.

By contrast, what we’ve got here is something that tries to apply the same method and the same madness to a more specific target, spread out over a longer period of time. The attention to detail is still there, but there are fewer details worth paying attention to. And while an 11-minute short film will get by on surface-level parody and shock value, that’s not enough to sustain a 95-minute feature.

I want to stress emphatically that Buddy is not a bad movie. This was built from the ground up to be a film that takes nostalgic childhood whimsy and perverts it into something that royally fucks with the audience on a mental/emotional level. It meets that goal with aplomb, so uniquely disturbing and unhinged that I can’t help but respect it.

Even so, I’m disappointed with how little is going on under the surface. Sure, there are some token themes about courage and life in a toxic relationship, but it could’ve been more and it could’ve been better. Then again, I suppose asking for a coherent statement in a film specifically built to be unnerving might’ve been a little too much.

Casper Kelly can pull off this particular trick like nobody else, but that one trick is getting old and I’ll be interested to see if it’s the only trick he’s got. Even so, it’s not bad for a first feature and I await his sophomore effort with great interest. In the meantime, this is an easy home video recommendation. Seriously, this movie demands to be seen on a TV set, that would add a whole ‘nother level to the craziness.