Film Review: Buffet Infinity (2026)
“It Should Have Been a Short” is a moniker I reluctantly give to films whose premise is fantastic but doesn’t have enough meat on the bone to be stretched into a feature. Often, these films are fascinating for the first one-third of their runtime (even convincing gullible film critics that this might be the most unique and outstanding thing they’ve seen in some time) but quickly sour due to the “one trick pony” nature of their narrative. Buffet Infinity may technically be such a film, but, if you’re able to strip away its repetitive nature and focus only on the comedically uncanny story unfolding before your eyes, there are still a lot of positives to be unearthed.
With no traditional narrative to speak of, Buffet Infinity slowly reveals itself through a series of local TV commercials and news broadcasts that grow in weirdness with each new iteration. What starts innocently enough as a passively aggressive feud between two competing restaurants, quickly morphs into a tale of a mysterious sinkhole, an L. Ron Hubbard-like religious figure, and a rash of disappearances. Adding to the fun are increasingly bizarre commercial spots from a fun-loving pawnshop owner and a sleazy personal injury lawyer with some very specific gripes – both of whom (maybe, it’s hard to tell sometimes) join a local business organization connected to a 24-hour all-you-can-eat joint with questionable employee practices.
It’s a fun premise, and the VHS-style production value is handled well enough to give it a proper dose of nostalgia for those of us who remember taping our favorite shows off of TV, but it’s not enough to justify a 100-minute runtime. Essentially, Buffet Infinity is an Analog Horror piece (a subgenre of found footage; see the Gemini Home Entertainment or the Local 58 YouTube series for a dose of the genre’s progenitors) – a genre I’ve come to enjoy when done well – but the appeal of those kinds of entries is that they are strictly limited to vaguely strung-together shorts. Breaking this formula often diludes immersion, something Buffet Infinity seems to have forgotten.
There have been successful Analog Horror-esque and inspired features (Skinamarink and Exit 8 come to mind, as do elements of I Saw the TV Glow – not to mention Backrooms, which is based directly on the YouTube series by Kane Parsons) but those films are better suited at establishing their world’s rules and sticking to them. Buffet Infinity, on the other hand, often abandons its own established motifs at seemingly random times. It’s this, more than anything, that turns me off about so many Analog Horror and found footage movies – at some point they forget what they are and veer off into a standard production. I’ve seen it time and again in recent years, and it never ceases to ruin a movie for me, at least on some level (I’m looking at you Late Night with the Devil).
Granted, the scenes that deviate from the old-school channel surfing in Buffet Infinity are pretty damned cool (creepy figures floating in the air and unfortunately placed eyeballs, for example), but they still betray the film’s main conceit. And for that, I will remain forever annoyed at director Simon Glassman – or at least until he makes it up to me with his next film by sticking to his own rules. Until then, we’ll call Buffet Infinity a noble attempt.
