Cinema Dispatch: Dust Bunny

 Dust Bunny and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate & Roadside Attractions

Directed by Bryan Fuller

It really isn’t that hard to sell me on a movie; in fact, I’m pretty easy to impress when you get right down to it. An interesting premise, a cast of good actors, and some sort of creative hook is all it takes to catch my attention, and few films this year grabbed me by the collar like this one. Heck, I didn’t even see a trailer for it, just one screenshot and a brief plot description, and yet that was all it took to get my butt into the theater for Bryan Fuller’s directorial debut! Does the movie live up to the sales pitch that so thoroughly drew me in, or are the coolest ideas all for naught if the filmmaker doesn’t know how to make the most of them? Let’s find out!!

As children, we all have to go through difficult life experiences as just another part of growing up. Getting bullied at school, learning to ride a bike without the training wheels, or in the case of Aurora (Sophie Sloan), dealing with the fact that your family was eaten by a monster under your bed. Okay, maybe it’s not the most relatable scenario to work through, but fortunately for Sophie, she just so happens to live across the hall from a hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) who’s very good at his job and might just have what it takes to stop this creature once and for all. It’s an uphill pitch for the hitman, to be sure, but when his own demons, albeit the less literal kind, start to bleed over into Aurora’s situation, he has no choice but to keep her safe from whatever monster is coming from under the floorboards or is knocking on her front door. Can Aurora be free from this monster once and for all with the help of her hitman buddy? What should a hitman do when confronted with such a fantastical story, and can someone with so much blood on his hands hope to protect a girl from those that wish her harm? I mean, given what he’s had to do his entire life, who’s to say which one of them has truly lost touch with reality?

I had high hopes going into this, but I was genuinely not expecting them to be so thoroughly exceeded, as this movie feels like a lost treasure of a bygone age; a hidden gem that never got its due in its own time but is being rediscovered by weirdo film fans of today. Think of early Peter Jackson, or even something like The Dark Crystal. It’s clumsy in places and maybe doesn’t work all the way through in the conventional blockbuster sense, but there’s a charm to it that cuts through the rough patches and envelops you in its quirky little world. It’s a movie that wears its influences on its sleeve, particularly the works of Terry Gilliam and City of Lost Children, but still finds enough of a unique voice that it stand out as one of the best films of the year. It’s whimsical without feeling overly maudlin, and still manages to have a sense of palpable danger despite feeling like a story told from the viewpoint of a child. It’s the kind of movie that Tim Burton should be knocking out of the park with his decades of experience, and while Fuller’s vision does inevitably feel derivative, much more of a homage to his influences rather than a contemporary, it captures that spirit with the creative verve of a budding filmmaker.

Something else that makes it feel like a film out of time is that it manages to be for kids and adults in the ways that you just don’t see come out of Hollywood these days. The fact that this didn’t go straight to streaming almost seems like a mistake given how weird the premise is and how tailor made it is for word of mouth, but regardless of all that, it definitely works as a family film despite how morbid it is. Perhaps it would be too much for very young children as the blood and violence do ultimately justify the film’s R rating, but it’s ultimately a fairy tale told from the point of view of a both a child and an adult. We see the world from both perspectives in a genuinely funny and heartwarming way, and the relationship between Mads Mikkelsen as the neighborly assassin and Sophie Sloan putting on a brave face through this tragedy is what will stick with audiences even more so than the giant monster whose presence is always felt even when not directly on screen. The film already does a great job skating between its child-like wonder and pitch-black humor just through Mikkelsen and Sloan interacting with one another, but the big creature-feature set pieces truly take the ball and runs with it as the wonder of its existence brutally crashes into the reality of its consequences, with a third act that is some of the most exciting and suspenseful action you will see all year.

If there’s any flaw to the movie, it’s that the film feels a bit empty; dazzling to be sure, but still a bit too hollow underneath the spectacle. It’s full of fantastical imagery, but the derivative nature of its influences left me feeling a bit unsure if even Fuller knew exactly what he was trying to say. Mads Mickelson’s whole assassination racket is a bit too whimsical when it should be a harsher contrast to the killer monster on the loose storyline, and the movie indulges in some incredibly obvious imagery without much of an explanation. I’m still unsure why one scene had the assassins with halos, but I guess it made sense to Bryan Fuller at the time. It’s not exactly a scathing criticism for me to be making, as it could just be that I failed to grasp the obvious, but it’s something I felt throughout the movie; particularly with its central killer monster metaphor. What the titular dust bunny is even supposed to be outside of its role as an instigator is left up to the audience to decide, but frankly, I felt somewhat rudderless when all was said and done which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the film seems perfectly satisfied that it wrapped everything up in a nice little bow at the end which wasn’t what I was feeling when the credits started to roll.

A seasoned creative jumping into the director’s chair has certainly had its share of duds for every successful attempt, but what tends to stand out in these types of films is that sense of creative drive; a burning desire to get outside their comfort zone and tell a story. Still, Fuller seems to have left his comfort zone only to find another comfort zone as the film’s clear influences does dull the overall impact of the movie, but it’s not much of a complaint when we simply aren’t getting very many movies like this anymore. I absolutely recommend checking it out if you can; not just because you will enjoy it, but because we need to support creative visions like this so that Hollywood will put its weight behind them again. I mean, Guillermo del Toro can’t be expected to hold up the mature fairy tale genre all on his own, should he? And hey, if this ends up being a huge success, then maybe someone will finally pony up the cash for these two to finally make that fourth season of Hannibal! Come on, you can even keep the bunny in there if you want! I’m sure Dr. Lector would love to serve it over a bed of cauliflower and drizzled in a balsamic reduction!