I’ve always been a bad sleeper. Even as a kid, I’d find myself waking up at the hours of the night that no child should ever see and lying awake for what seemed like forever. As I got a bit older I’d sneak from my downstairs bedroom to the basement, where the TV lived. The big one in the wooden cabinet with the huge, bricklike remote. Long before streaming or on-demand viewing of any kind (outside of the small handful of VHS titles that I’d seen several times over) I was constrained to whatever was on late night TV at the time. And the things I’d find in those wee hours were the kind of tonally-bizarre infomercials, pulpy movies, and local TV curiosities that have been mostly lost to time. 

Simon Glassman’s horror-comedy Buffet Infinity rides a crest of renewed interest in these kinds of curiosities that are seeded with analog internet horror like Local 58, Gemini Home Entertainment, and the liminal atmosphere of movies like The Backrooms and Skinamarink. Like Canadian classic comedy SCTV, Glassman’s film mimics the feeling of flipping channels on an analog TV, its story unraveling subtly through short snippets of news broadcasts and commercials from the community of North Westridge, Alberta. Through these ads we’ll find out that the town is plagued by some kind of environmental anomaly that causes the residents to experience an ear-splitting noise with no clear source, a sinkhole that has appeared in the parking lot of two fiercely-competing local restaurants, and the disappearance of several citizens. 

While all this is going on, the ads for a local ambulance-chasing lawyer, a car dealership where Captain Savings faces down and defeats Professor High-Price in increasingly extreme ways, a pawn shop run by fledgling musician with objectively terrible but annoyingly catchy jingles, and for the titular Buffet desperately persuade us that everything is fine.  It’s an incredibly well-crafted critique of the ever-expanding, profit-at-all-costs capitalist mindset that gets less subtle as the cosmic horror-tinged existential threat begins to consume North Westridge wholesale. For all its forthrightly surreal tone, there’s an authenticity to each of Buffet Infinity‘s ads where each feels completely unique from the others, but are also internally consistent enough in messaging and aesthetic that they could be credibly created from the same small businesses. They also feel just real enough to drive Buffet Infinity‘s horror.

Ads for the Buffet Infinity restaurant itself, the centrepiece of the movie, are emblematic of the kind of detailed, multi-layered humour that Glassman has crafted here. Starting off as a normal ad for a buffet of slightly off-putting food with ever-expanding and incongruous options, Buffet Infinity becomes less and less subtle in its battle for customers against its biggest competitor, a charming local establishment called Jenny’s Sandwiches. Run by the charming, maybe-Italian Jennifer Avery, Jenny’s trades on fairly simple sandwiches topped with a beloved secret sauce that Jenny claims is a family recipe. Jenny’s shares the plaza with Buffet Infinity, but the forces of capitalism cannot abide anything but the pursuit of expansion and domination at all costs, in spite of any external factors like disappearing children and mysterious parking lot sinkholes. Through the ads for both establishments, we see the two restaurants competing on price, on food selection, and Buffet Infinity even produces a knockoff secret sauce. But soon the attacks become desperately personal to the point that they feel like political campaign ads, slandering Avery and extolling the virtues of the ever-expanding Buffet. And when people – including Jenny herself – start disappearing, things start to get very serious even if the Buffet Infinity folks keep trying everything they can to lure people through its doors.

Bizarrely, there’s only one other force opposing Buffet Infinity and attempting to warn Westridge of the impending danger. This comes in the form of the dubious Scientology-coded Society for Religious Freedom run by author, psychiatrist, reverend, and singer Langdon P. Hershey. His multi-channel (so to speak) campaign comes in several forms. His paid-for ad breaks, especially the ones that share the aesthetic and tone of the Emergency Broadcast System tests and alerts that used to break through our TV signals –  are where Buffet Infinity most closely resembles Local 58. That trademark VHS camera font warning of an impending evil over a glitchy red background conveys a particular kind of frightening urgency in exactly the way that that particular piece of digital ephemera does. Interspersed are ads for the town’s Book Fair, which prominently features works of great literature, including the ‘Serpent and the Starship’ series of fantasy novels by Langdon. Later in the film we’re also blessed with snippets of Langdon’s musical stylings in the form of an ad for his album, not dissimilar from the ads I used to see for box set compilations of 80s anthems in my late night binges. 

What’s extra strange and scary about Langdon’s commercials is that they seem to be the only ones telling the truth about the situation in North Westridge. More than even the sporadic news breaks and especially more than the “everything’s fine! Keep shopping and consuming!” messaging of the car dealership, pawn shop, and the restaurant commercials, they credibly warn of the impending danger. In a curious dichotomy from the standard commercials in Buffet Infinity that scare me with their upbeat sugarcoating of the literal dark vortex in the parking lot and the sudden atypical migration of all of the town’s birds, it feels pretty bizarre to be warned about these things when the source is an L. Ron Hubbard-esque cult leader.

Now, I’m not one to scroll on my phone while watching movies and narrative TV*. But, based on my experience at movie theatres and with friends, the temptation to do so is ever-present and growing. Because of this, I’m especially appreciative of movies that encourage close, engaged watching like Buffet Infinity does. The format itself of constantly-switching voices, tone, and aesthetics through the different commercials and segments does a terrific job of that on its own but there’s also so many subtle and unsubtle details buried in nearly every second of each one that you can’t look away. Conspicuous typos, glitches, and smash cut juxtaposition of the ads themselves reveal a layer of subtext buried in the messaging that are the source of many of Buffet Infinity’s best laughs. This also inspires repeat viewings, evidenced by the fact that I rewound the movie and watched a few segments again as soon as it was over. I even found myself rewatching Ahmed’s pawn shop jingles days later when they earwormed their way into my head too. Like Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds of Beavers (2022) before it, I’ve been turning to Buffet Infinity for small doses of comfort viewing and, even more than that movie, the segmented format of Glassman’s film lends itself well to dipping in and out for short, satisfying bursts. 

Sleep is important, say all the legitimate doctors and wellness people on the Internet** and it’s definitely something I’ve been trying to improve on as I get older. The days of being a proud “night owl” and attending late-night movie screenings*** and, before that, attending the kinds of nightclub and rave parties and festivals in Toronto that I am now definitively too old for, have a far more detrimental effect on my health than they used to. With our on-demand media landscape where nearly anything and everything you could hope to watch is available to us at the click of a button, the real message and horror of Buffet Infinity feels as clear as can be. Sure, the food might not always be great, it’s crowded out most of the quality alternatives, and you might have to navigate some pretty dark sinkholes on your way to access it, but there sure is a lot of it and it’s all in one (more or less) convenient place.  That’s the Buffet Infinity guarantee.

*I will tend to “second screen” sometimes when watching the less engaging parts of the guilty-pleasure reality shows I still engage with like Traitors or Fear Factor, or to fact-check while I watch game shows like The Floor

**Your favourite health influencers probably aren’t, since it’s difficult to sell supplements to help with sleep without getting into illegal substances, and sleeping people tend not to like and subscribe to your posts.

***Okay, I’m still doing this and am unlikely to stop, but I am more cautious about doing it several nights in a row like I used to.

Sachin Hingoo has run out of podcasts to listen to at 1am while he tosses and turns, worrying about the expanding sinkhole in his backyard.

Buffet Infinity is currently available on VOD platforms from Yellow Veil Pictures.