THE Fuzzies started in 2020 as a short film in the shape of an offbeat horror-comedy packed with puppets, stop motion animation, and a single bathroom.
It struck a nerve, and has now expanded its surreal Sesame Street-esque world, raising the stakes with it, as childhood friends reunite, buried secrets surface, and The Sunny Smiles Show reveals its twisted legacy.
After the death of their childhood friend, a group of old pals reunite at her eerie estate — only to discover that the beloved characters from her famous children’s TV show aren’t as friendly as they seem. Blending grotesque puppetry, stop-motion horrors, and dark humour, The Fuzzies is a horror-comedy about friendship, fame, and the monsters we leave behind.
Director Josh Funk leads us into a dark and menacing childhood world where the things that once made us feel warm and fluffy inside, now want to light fire to our bedtime stories and smother us in our sleep. Think Fraggle Rock meets The Last House on the Left.
The stuff of innocent children’s play takes a far more demonic turn here, as marionettes with dead eyes, gleeful grins, and twisted puppets on a string, creep out of the shadows. This is a nostalgic horror-comedy that sets out to ruin our early years by bringing the monsters out from under the bed to dance all over those sweet dreams like Ernie and Bert on ketamine.
What Funk’s film often loses on original ideas, he more than makes up for with a palette of bright colours, guileless puppets and simple backdrops out of your favourite Jim Henson shows of old. At times, this sense of innocence works really well to create a creepy fever-dream. It’s pretty, easy to get lost in, but leaves us wanting — just like Bosco when he used to go through that magic door.
(3/5)