A unicorn shouldn't be terrifying. The creature belongs to children's birthday parties and Lisa Frank folders, not crime scenes. Yet 'Buddy,' one of 2026's breakout hits, makes that cognitive dissonance its entire premise—and according to producer Tracy Rosenblum, co-writer Jamie King, and Roadside Attractions' head of digital marketing Melissa Yerou, that contradiction is precisely what made the world fall in love with it. The trio discussed the film's unexpected success at IndieWire's Future of Filmmaking Summit in late October. ## The Surface: A Creature Feature With Glitter On its face, 'Buddy' appears to be a darkly comic subversion of the magical-pet genre. The setup is deceptively simple: a character acquires a unicorn. The unicorn kills people. What follows in the first act is a tonal high-wire act, balancing whimsy against violence in a way that shouldn't work but does. The film doesn't hide its central conceit—the title character is both adorable and lethal from the opening scenes—but it uses that transparency to ask a more uncomfortable question. ## The Undercurrent: Complicity Wrapped in Cuteness What 'Buddy' is really interrogating is our willingness to excuse harm when it comes packaged in something we find appealing. The unicorn itself functions as a walking metaphor for charismatic danger—the friend whose cruelty you overlook because they're fun at parties, the institution whose abuses you rationalize because you benefit from its existence, the leader whose violence you minimize because their rhetoric feels good. The film never makes this subtext explicit, which is its smartest move. It simply watches its human characters make increasingly elaborate justifications for keeping the creature around, and lets the audience recognize their own reflection. The recurring visual motif of glitter—which the unicorn sheds constantly, marking every scene of carnage with sparkle—becomes the film's sharpest symbol. Beauty doesn't erase brutality. It just makes us m