We’re still making our way through the mammoth program of films at Panic Fest 2026, and I think I just watched what is surely the weirdest movie playing at the festival this year: Buffet Infinity, written and directed by Simon Glassman. The best way to describe this low-budget Canadian cult-classic-in-the-making is to imagine that you dropped a tab of acid late at night but immediately fell asleep while watching deranged infomercials at 3:00 a.m. It captures the exact brand of absurd, otherworldly dreams you’d no doubt have in that state.
Entirely composed of local TV ads, Buffet Infinity taps into that specific “weird reality” of regional broadcasting. The kind where the jingles are permanently burned into your brain. I know that The Loan Arranger’s I’m The Cashman is still living rent-free in my brain, and I haven’t lived in Toronto for years! Fans of films that play with form, like WNUF: Halloween Special (2013), Survivor Skills (2020), or (if you’re super cool) the cult Canadian TV series SCTV, will find a lot to love here. It’s pure midnight madness fun through and through.
Early on in Buffet Infinity you get a sense of the movie’s fictional town through a series of local TV spots, including ads for a used car dealership, a pawn shop owner, injury lawyers, and insurance companies. But a new business is coming to town called Buffet Infinity, promising everything you’ve ever wanted….
Even before the buffet arrives, the town is steeped in high strangeness. There is a sinkhole in the parking lot that keeps growing, and a local demon cult religious group with some real creepy pasta inspired ad spots. Oh, and they have an L Ron Hubbard-esque leader that publishes sci-fi-fantasy novels, edits his own music videos and, yes, he is also a black belt in karate.
Best of all is is the smear campaign Buffet Infinity immediately runs against their neighbour, Jenny’s Sandwich Shop, questioning what’s really in Jenny’s secret sauce and casting doubt on the authenticity of Italian heritage. Meanwhile, people are disappearing at alarming rates, the residents are rioting, and there is a sense that something straight out of The Twilight Zone is swallowing the town hole. By the end, it feels like an apocalypse where the only survivors are the commercial actors who refuse to stop recording tv spots!
Because you are watching it in 30-second to one-minute chunks, it can feel like it drags in the middle, but that unconventional structure is exactly what makes Buffet Infinity such an interesting little indie genre film. There is no one character to follow as your hero, but there is a mosaic of characters and collectively they create a patchwork of utterly mad & absurdly hilarious genre-bending midnight madness.
Buffet Infinity was an official selection of Panic Fest 2026 and hits theatres April 24th. If you have a cool indie theater in your area, keep an ear to the ground. This one is going to suck your brains out of your eyeballs!
And, of course, be sure to let us know what we thought of Buffet Infinity over in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord! Social Media is A Cesspool. Come Hang Where The Cool Creeps Are.
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