Childhood fears are often extremely personal in how they manifest internally, but many are universal in the outward shape they take; fear of darkness and the monsters lurking within that unknown void being one of the most common. “Dust Bunny,” the debut feature film from prolific television creator Bryan Fuller (“Wonder Falls,” “Pushing Daisies,” “Hannibal”) takes a simple question: “What if the monster under the bed is real?” and crafts a thrilling and heartfelt action-horror-comedy that brings his trademark mixture of whimsical maximalism and macabre humor effortlessly to the big screen.
The film stars newcomer Sophie Sloan as Aurora, a young girl whose belief in the monster under her bed is so strong that the creature actually comes to life in physical form, at first as cute, yet sinister collection of dust shaped like a bunny before morphing into a giant room-sized furry piranha-like menace that eats people in one swallow, brought to life through thrilling CGI-enhanced puppetry. When her parents don’t believe her, she wishes on a falling star for someone to help her kill the beast.
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Enter Resident 5B, played with irrepressible charm and agility by long-time Fuller collaborator Mads Mikkelsen, Aurora’s neighbor from across the hall. Convinced that she saw the man slay a dragon in Chinatown one night, Aurora attempts to hire him to kill the monster under her bed after it eats her parents. Despite the mess in her apartment, the man, like everyone else in her life, brushes off her fears as the exaggerations of an overactive imagination. But because of his actual profession — he’s a hired hitman — he thinks perhaps one of his monsters may have accidentally axed her parents thinking they were him, and will come for Aurora next.
The rest of the film plays out like a mixture of “Leon: The Professional,” “Poltergeist,” “City of Lost Children,” and “John Wick” as Resident 5B fights off monsters and men, bonds with the little girl while dismembering a hitman’s body, and protects her from the ire of a fellow mysterious and ruthless professional killer played by Sigourney Weaver, channeling her hilariously venomous Oscar-nominated performance in “Working Girl.” David Dastmalchian also brings his singularly bizarre persona into the last act of the film as one of the many hitmen coming for Resident 5B, while the otherworldly Sheila Atim rounds out the cast as an FBI agent who exudes big Pam Grier energy.
Fuller has thrown a lot in the blender in terms of themes, imagery, and characters and the result is exactly what you would expect a Fullerverse-ian spin on a family friendly (ish) horror film would be. Shot in Hungary, the bulk of the action takes place inside the lux apartment building where Aurora and Resident 5B live, a pre-war style building with winding staircases, thick wallpaper, and an old school gated elevator. The art direction has nods to the luxury of “Hannibal” season three with the vibrant color palette of “Pushing Daisies.” Viewers familiar with Fuller’s television work will not be surprised by the many shots of delicious food, including a dim sum dish that looks like a cute little bunny, which was styled by Janice Poon, whose work on “Hannibal” was the cherry on top of its aesthete horror vibe.
DP Nicole Hirsch Whitaker renders the film’s colorful imagery with a fairytale glaze, emphasizing the maximalism of the production design, while often slightly warping the edges to give the frame a dreamlike quality. Old fashioned filmic techniques like split diopter shots, iris wipes, and chiaroscuro lighting add another layer of maximalist flare to the whole affair. Eccentric touches, like the bunny dim sum moving slightly before being eaten or a taxidermied chicken with an egg in its butt as a lamp or a swinging church choir wearing Pam Am style uniforms, firmly place “Dust Bunny” inside the whimsical world of the Fullerverse, although the uninitiated may find it all a bit too much.
Mikkelsen, in one of the most tender performances of his career, and Sloan, whose expressive eyes stay impossibly wide for the duration of the film, craft an easy chemistry together, his mordant humor matching hers like a glove. By the end of the film, a running joke where Resident 5B, due to his thick Danish accent, cannot say Aurora’s name properly becomes a term of endearment between the two, who form a new family from the broken pieces of their own.
For all its filmic flourishes, this a sweet film at its heart, one interested in the darker side of childhood, not just the fears we have as children, but the anger as well. The ending might not sit well with everyone, it’s both on-the-nose and a little overly simple, but as someone who had rage issues as a child, I felt it deeply in my bones. We all carry our monsters from childhood with us to adulthood, whether we’d like to admit it or not. As far as Fuller is concerned, the best we can do is accept that part of ourselves, and find more constructive ways to feed it. Like making emotionally resonant, visually resplendent, and ridiculously gruesome art about the power of chosen family.
Grade: B
“Dust Bunny” premiered in Midnight Madness at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It will be released in theaters by Lionsgate on December 12.
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