It’s a beautiful day in Westridge County. The sun is shining, the birds are behaving strangely, the local fringe religious movement are advertising their upcoming book fair, and a large sinkhole has opened up in the car park outside everyone’s favourite new spot to eat… Buffet Infinity! Offering a seemingly endless variety of all-you-can-eat foodstuffs to its patrons, all prepared by a team of between 20 and 30 suspiciously unseen chefs, Buffet Infinity is no ordinary restaurant – in fact, some could say it’s a little strange. Even stranger is the rate at which Buffet Infinity is growing, as local businesses (and business owners) disappear one by one to make way for the eatery’s rapid expansion – and, unfortunately for the residents of Westridge County, this marks only the beginning of a series of unimaginable and surreal horrors that will bring death (or perhaps something even worse) and devastation to their community.
This is the premise of Buffet Infinity, the feature directorial debut of Canadian filmmaker, comedian and caricaturist Simon Glassman. Screening as part of the 2026 edition of Panic Fest in North Kansas City, Missouri, the bizarre cosmic-comedy-horror narrative of Buffet Infinity is presented entirely via a series of regional television adverts and news broadcasts, each of which gradually help to construct a larger picture of the grand and multi-faceted terror that hangs above Westridge County like a grotesque, burger-shaped Sword of Damocles. Another pleasingly unique aspect to Buffet Infinity is the way in which it approaches combining comedy and horror – whereas most horror-comedies utilise elements of genre-literate parody and exaggeration (particularly in the splatter department) to generate their laughs and scares, Glassman’s film aims to be genuinely frightening in a subtle, sinister, uneasy way, with the absurdity of the piece being both a tool for offbeat humour and nightmarish, uncomfortable horror.
Glassman’s film aims to be genuinely frightening in a subtle, sinister, uneasy way, with the absurdity of the piece being both a tool for offbeat humour and nightmarish, uncomfortable horror.
Of course, given its region-specific format, the impact of Buffet Infinity upon viewers in the UK (myself included) is going to be very different to the effect it has on audiences in the US and Canada. The majority of local televised news in the UK is handled by the BBC, a nationwide state-run broadcaster, so the lo-fi aesthetics of regional broadcasting from overseas that will be nostalgic to many feel completely alien to me, and that has an appeal all of its own. For me, watching Buffet Infinity felt less like a perversion of the familiar, and more like a voyage into a strange and unfamiliar alternate dimension where none of the laws of our reality apply (and, to be fair, I assume that’s what Canadian viewers of Buffet Infinity will feel, albeit in a less detached way). Tonally, the movie is rather reminiscent of shorts shown as part of Adult Swim’s Infomercials strand, in particular Casper Kelly’s Too Many Cooks and Alan Resnick’s work as part of Wham City Comedy (Unedited Footage of a Bear, This House Has People In It), yet I personally found it to be more successful in crafting a disquietingly wacky vibe than many other recent horror-comedy works that wear their Adult Swim influence more proudly.
There are uneven aspects to Buffet Infinity, for sure; for a film structured the way it is, Buffet Infinity occasionally runs the risk of outstaying its welcome through its length, and some portions and threads of the film’s labyrinthine narrative feel like they drag on for a little too long, or distract from funnier and creepier aspects of the piece. Nonetheless, Buffet Infinity is conceptually and stylistically strong enough to power through its moments of mild instability, and by the end I found myself satisfied by the answers that Glassman provides to his film’s unnerving questions – including a finale which recontextualises some of the film’s more upsetting moments of existential dread in a brilliantly funny way.
There’s so much on the menu at Buffet Infinity that it’s a challenge for diners to decide what they want, but given the amount of variety, there’s sure to be something for everybody – so why not come down and help a local business grow?
BUFFET INFINITY SCREENED AT PANIC FEST 2026
