“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” meets “The Office” in Colter Lemmon's funny, gory, and quotable debut mockumentary “Taffy: A Divine Instrument Against the Demonic Forces of Evil,” a Tallgrass Film Festival world premiere. 

Taffeta “Taffy” Wilkson (Hannah Unruh) is no ordinary 18-year-old girl. She loves her dad (Jamie Campbell), and she eats too much cheese. She wears socks with fun patterns, like a shark with a martini glass, so she's “not too sore about not having fur.” Her best friend is a worm, appropriately called Wormy, who lives in her backyard and keeps her secrets: “Who's a worm gonna tell? And more importantly, who's gonna ask a worm?”

Also, Taffy is a divine instrument against the demonic forces of evil. Every Revelation Day, the angel Zerachiel descends as an orb of light to give her specific missions, usually tracking down a possessed person and attempting a baseball-bat-aided exorcism. This year it's a ringtone composer named Lance (Todd Linebaugh), who, post-possession, concludes his tale of heroin addiction and sex work with “Candles, pentagrams, a little blood. It's all on Yahoo. I would not recommend it.”

But this year is also different: Zerachiel tells Taffy it's her last Revelation Day, that soon she'll begin her true journey and leave her home and her father behind. It's tough news for a dad and daughter with such a close relationship — Unruh and Campbell have terrific, warm chemistry and combined comic timing — but how can Taffy fight God's purpose for her? Does she have to start going to church, like her dad's friend, Father Martin Lawrence (Nathan Thomas), wants? Maybe it's time for her dad to move on, too. Should he take things to the next level with his girlfriend Stacy (Trish Berrong)? 

Horror comedy can be a difficult cinematic trick to pull off, combining two viscerally felt genres in one: if one definition of a horror movie is that it makes the audience scared, and a comedy that it makes them laugh, then a horror comedy should do both. Often, though, they lean on laughs, using it to counteract the possibility of fright. “Taffy” isn't terrifying, although it's got some goopy, effective blood and guts, but it's not using humor to distract or to disarm.

Instead, it's got jokes. Lots of them. So many of them. Many more than the usual mainstream comedy in 2025 (with the rebooted “Naked Gun” a noted exception). It's just a very funny movie, and funny in various forms, from visual gags to one-liners to Stacy's incredible monologue about turning her ex-husband's Porsche into a garbage-filled raccoon love shack. My favorite gag in the whole thing was Taffy's accidental telepathy letting slip to the cameraman (Patrick Poe, also a producer and cinematographer) that his wife is cheating on him with Mark, the sound guy (Liam Chewning). In the next scene, the cam op yells at her over the phone, most offended that she'd cheat with the sound guy when she's married to “a race car driver of the documentary.”

“Taffy” doesn't belabor the obvious metaphor about an only child leaving the nest, but Unruh and Campbell have some bittersweet moments in between the jokes. It's also great to see the “teen demon hunter” story told with a normal-looking woman in the lead! 

The Details

“Taffy: A Divine Instrument Against the Demonic Forces of Evil”

Available online October 21-28 during the virtual portion of the Tallgrass Film Festival.

 “Taffy” had its world premiere at the Wichita film festival on October 17. It’s available to stream for $7.99 through October 28. 

Read our other Tallgrass coverage:

• The Harmon sisters are back with a new documentary about the golden age of shopping
• Salina director's short film is a personal take on the fentanyl crisis
• 'An Autumn Summer' captures the fierceness of adolescent friendship & romantic love
• ‘Flood’ examines evangelical family dynamics — and Kansas fossil hunters

Anna Andersen co-hosts Your Favorite Bad Movie Podcast with their husband. They have three cats named Brains, Hamburger, and Twinkle.

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