This review is part of our ongoing coverage of the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival
I’m not sure how to write about Buffet Infinity, the debut feature from Canadian comedian and artist, Simon Glassman. For starters, it’s unlike any film I’ve ever seen before. Also, it functions on so many different levels that singling out all of them would require less of a film review and more of an essay. Finally, trying to write about it without giggling and smiling the entire way through could derail my thought processes. But I’m going to give it the ‘old college try’ because everyone in the world needs to inject this film into their brains and experience what I experienced going in stone cold to a picture that made me excited for genre cinema again in ways I haven’t felt in a very long time. I think this might just be a masterpiece.
The general conceit of Buffet Infinity might read like a gimmick, on the surface, but you soon abandon those notions. The entirety of this film is told through a collection of infomercials, commercials, and news broadcasts beaming from the local Westridge County TV station. There are probably over 100 meticulously crafted pieces that harken back to the Golden Age of analog advertisement and news journalism. As a child of the 90s, I felt each and every one in my bones. But, what starts somewhat random, eventually produces a series of mysterious narrative threads all surrounding a cult leader, his followers, and their connection to a series of businesses in Westridge County, including “Buffet Infinity”, the flagship establishment that just keeps getting bigger and bigger, more and more powerful, and more and more dangerous.
Some of the threads we follow are: a local businesswoman whose family’s secret sandwich sauce is coveted by everyone; a local attorney with a ‘deviation’; a superhero and supervillain whose characters serve as the mascots for a local car dealership; a man trapped in an existential hell, also known as a pharmaceutical commercial; and endless commercials for the titular “Buffet Infinity”. Throughout these narratives, people consistently go missing as an L. Ron Hubbard-esque figure slowly takes over the hearts and minds of Westridge County.
The craft on display here is staggering. Each of these pieces is pitch perfect in how it so closely resembles what it’s mimicking. The production design, the music, the graphics – it’s as if the filmmakers found a time machine, went back to 1995, and stole all of the assets needed to make these as authentic as possible. The actors, each effective in their own unique way, are always on the same wavelength as the material, and it’s very difficult to get an actor to act ‘badly’ on purpose and have it work. I honestly don’t know how they did it on such a grand scale. But it’s the script that really shines here, delicately weaving a genre narrative into a structure that should never allow for one. Each time a new layer of the onion would get peeled away, I’d have to pause the picture just so I could figure out how it managed to work.
Even though Buffet Infinity is entirely unique, it does owe some debts to what came before. Amazon Women on the Moon really set the stage for this sort of picture, and it feels as if that might have been the jumping off point, but with some “Too Many Cooks” energy thrown in for extra measure. And it’s entirely Canadian. It was shocking for me to realize that Canadians experienced the exact same sorts of mass marketing that we did in the States. I didn’t even realize it was Canadian until the very first ‘about’ hit my ears. Then I lit up.
Buffet Infinity needs to be seen to be believed. It’s rare to watch a film that you know instantly is already a cult classic before it has ever been released. The state of Canadian cinema is alive and well, and if this is any indication of the talent that’s working there, the United States feels lazy in comparison. See this film as soon as you can. And avoid the sinkhole.
Rating: ****1/2/***** (WORLD PREMIERE)
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