Buffet Infinity

Bluesky

Try what drugs and meditative methods you will – there are certain states of human conscious which can only be reached late at night, all alone, watching endless adverts scroll by on a television screen without actively paying attention. This begets a particular kind of hypnotic condition in which one is at one with capitalism, desirous of nothing and yet intimately enmeshed with the soul of the marketplace. It’s a dreamspace in which you might genuinely imagine fitting out your house with discount carpets at unbeatable prices, pouring out your heart to a lawyer about an accident that wasn’t your fault, or eating at the new restaurant just off highway 1 where you can enjoy fresh vegetables, succulent meats, divine deserts and more, all without the need to interact with a single member of staff.

Why are there no staff to be seen at Buffet Infinity? Why does the same company post other adverts showing two smiling people in a kitchen and insisting that the rumours (whatever they may be) are false? What’s the deal with the sinkhole in the corner of the parking lot? Perhaps it’s product of the recent earth tremor. The police ask people to stop throwing trash into it. “Unlike our neighbours, the sinkhole will not be affecting our business hours,” proclaims the restaurant.

These and other mysteries unfold over the course of an hour and 40 minutes, brought to us entirely through the medium of adverts – but the occasional news clip to let us know about local worries over disappearing pets, and later disappearing people. “‘In honour of those who have gone missing...all this is only $4.99,” says the buffet in one of its most charming moments. We watch a series of ads in which crises occur in a woman’s life and she’s happy that she bought the tight insurance police. In another set, a superhero determined to keep car prices low becomes increasingly violent. Langdon Hershey, author, sensei, religious guru, recording artiste, promotes his latest book, It Will Consume Us All, and talks about his mastery of science fiction, martial arts, neurolinguistic theory and sensual massage. Then there are the curious interruptions: messages which appear on a bright red screen beside a varying number of black dots. “You can make the black dot disappear through the power of the fortified mind,” says the first one, but as time passes, they become a lot more sinister.

Just like those familiar experiences of watching late night ads, Buffet Infinity casts a spell over the viewer. Some will doubtless get angry and the absence of a more obvious, more conventional story, and send angry letters to critics. others, however, will find themselves almost drifting off over time, maintaining their alertness only due to the humour, and every now again snapping back to attention as they realise that events have gone in an altogether unexpected direction, or that the words they can hear, whilst perfect in cadence and form, make absolutely no sense. Has an AI written them, or something alien, something which has learned how to mimic the language of such ads but has no real concept of their meaning?

“Stop worrying about where birds are going,” we are told. People from several of the adverts we have seen praise Westridge United for Independent Business, and we glimpse what might be one of its rituals. There is a mention of Azathoth (HP Lovecraft’s blind, idiot god around whom the universe revolves). Towards the end, we get an invitation whose pertinence director Simon Glassman could not have guessed at when he began making the film, but which generative AI has brought to life: “Explore your memories not as they were but as you wish they had been.” Reality is slipping away. Cosmic horror and real world horror draw ever closer together. “It is feeding on you,” warn those strange red messages. This probably the strangest entry in the Fantasia 2025 line-up, but the scariest thing about it is how familiar it feels.

Source