★★★★
The boldest horror of the year just dropped, and it’s a funny, freaky, cosmic nightmare that feels like it’s watching you back.
Buffet Infinity, directed by Canadian Simon Glassman, stitches together hundreds of hours of low‑budget local TV spots – insurance ads, used‑car pitches, news reports and insurgent religious transmissions – to weave a darkly comedic horror story.
(This is a film best seen cold, so if it’s already on your watchlist you may wish to stop here and clamp your hands over your ears… but for those who wish to know more, read on…)
At first presented as a stream of unrelated, VHS-grained televisual ephemera, Buffet Infinity slowly lets its narrative emerge. Passing references in local commercials begin to overlap: two rival eateries in the fictional Westridge County start responding to each other, their escalating feud threaded through public access promos and late-night ad slots. As their rivalry grows, so too do the mentions of a widening sinkhole and a spreading religious cult. Something strange is happening in this small town – and at the centre of it all is the mysterious, ever-evolving diner known as Buffet Infinity.
Glassman’s cinematic curveball mixes post-Lovecraftian horror and broad cable TV satire to deliver the Found Footage genre the shot in the arm it needed. As a response to our current geopolitical mess, it’s particularly prescient; the horror emerges from the blandly reassuring background noise of capitalism, and by the time it surrounds us it’s too late – the nightmare has already corrupted the very fabric of the town, the film, and maybe reality itself.
To say much more about the plot would spoil the fun, but for me this is the funniest and most formally inventive horror film of the year. If you’re drawn to horror that infects and warps the structure it inhabits, this is essential viewing. It’s House of Leaves by way of late-night infomercials, or Alan Resnick’s cursed Adult Swim spots metastasised to feature length.
Easily the most distinctive horror film I’ve seen all year, this is a must-watch for fans of found footage experiments. Genre lovers with an insatiable hunger for the unusual should take a trip to Buffet Infinity, the perky apocalypse conveniently unfolding just off the highway, where “all you can eat” might just include your mind. Convenient parking out front.
Buffet Infinity played at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival last night. Good news for those outside Canada- it’s already been picked up by Yellow Veil Pictures for a release to come.
Whitlock&Pope 