THE STORY – Like many children, Aurora fearfully believes a monster lurks beneath her bed. And she has good reason to: her foster parents have been eaten by one. Fortunately, she has arrived at a practical solution. She will hire the enigmatic hit man who lives next door to slay the beast. But procuring her neighbour’s services will not be easy, for he believes her family was mistakenly dispatched by an assassin’s bullets that were meant for him.
THE CAST – Sophie Sloan, Mads Mikkelsen, Sigourney Weaver, Sheila Atim & David Dastmalchian
THE TEAM – Bryan Fuller (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 106 Minutes
Bryan Fuller’s television work is the stuff of legend. The morbidly whimsical “Pushing Daisies,” the sleekly artistic horror of “Hannibal,” and the oddball curiosity “Wonderfalls” all received critical praise but low viewership, deservedly developing cult followings for Fuller’s unique visual and storytelling sensibilities. Given his strong sense of style, it was only a matter of time before he made a feature film, and that time has finally come. “Dust Bunny,” a delightfully, uniquely twisted take on kiddie horror playing in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival, feels like a witch’s brew of all the best bits of Fuller’s previous work, an announcement of the arrival of an auteur who already has a style all his own.
Young Aurora (Sophie Sloan in a terrific debut) has the same fear of the monster under her bed as many young children do. She knows, however, that there really is a monster there, because despite her warnings to stay off the floor in her room, her parents didn’t listen, and got themselves eaten. However, in the dark of night, she spies her neighbor (the superhumanly stoic Mads Mikkelsen) killing a dragon, prompting her to inquire as to procuring his services to kill her monster. What she doesn’t know is that he is actually an assassin for hire, and what she thought was a dragon was a group of men hiding under a Chinese dragon costume, trying to escape his deadly blade. Sure that the girl is making up stories to cope with her parents’ murder by people aiming for him, he plays along while using an underworld contact (Sigourney Weaver) to discover who may have killed the girl’s parents. But the more he sees, the more it appears that Aurora is right, and there really is a hungry monster hiding under her bed. In attempting to protect her, though, he starts to grow a conscience again and ends up putting her in more earthly danger. With a monster coming for them on one side and assassins of various stripes coming for them on the other, will either of them be able to survive?
Just like Fuller’s previous projects, “Dust Bunny” has all the makings of a future cult classic. At their basest level, each of Fuller’s projects has been a genre piece filtered through his unique sensibility. “Dust Bunny” is essentially to kiddie horror what “Hannibal” was to serial killer police procedurals. Fuller has tremendous amounts of fun playing with perspective, using different lenses to distort Aurora’s room so that it really does feel haunted by some malevolent presence. Nicole Hirsch Whitaker’s cinematography brings to mind Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “City of Lost Children,” another piece of dark whimsy that had the feeling of a scary bedtime story. They go all out in the film’s opening sequence, a mostly wordless introduction to the film’s world that features a surfeit of dazzle-dazzle style. As Mikkelsen hunts his targets, we see them from Aurora’s perspective, as shadows blown up larger than life by the light of fireworks. Despite the slightly dodgy CGI, it’s a bravura sequence, full of colors and camera movement that immerses you in the child’s point of view. The action can be somewhat difficult to follow, but the images themselves are intoxicating. Though the film becomes more dialogue-driven afterwards, this opening gambit finds Fuller pushing his visual style to the absolute limit. It’s exhilarating to watch, every moment heightened by the camera and Fuller’s typically personality-filled production design. The film takes place in a heightened reality, with Aurora’s home bringing to mind cityscapes from such children’s classics as “Mary Poppins” and “A Little Princess,” and the overstuffed sets fully flesh out that world.
Fuller has always brought a strong sense of personality to each of his projects, and he doesn’t water it down at all for the big screen. While the film’s oddball tone feels as invigorating as a breath of fresh air, it does raise the question of the intended audience. The child’s-eye-view perspective and sense of whimsy that accompany the flashes of horror often make it feel like a scary bedtime story, somewhere adjacent to R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” books, but the violence and focus on the business side of Mikkelsen’s work don’t feel very kid-friendly. Fuller fully commits to his vision so that the film never feels tonally confused, but some of the film’s more fantastical elements (particularly the visual effects on the titular monster, a great piece of creature design that sometimes requires more than the film’s budget can allow) have a certain campy quality to them that feel more like they’re riffing on kids’ movies than actually trying to be a kids’ movie in a way that’s difficult to parse. The performances are all on that same pseudo-camp wavelength, with Mikkelsen’s constitutional inability to treat children as anything other than tiny adults reaping large comic rewards. Weaver and Sheila Atim’s supporting performances fit in perfectly with Fuller’s heightened reality, going big but adding a slightly gritty quality that keeps everything grounded in a recognizable reality.
Granted, the question of “who is this film for?” is more of a problem for the film’s marketing team than anyone else, as “Dust Bunny” feels so full of Fuller’s signature voice that anyone seeing it just because of his name will come away satisfied. No matter who the film is intended for, the voice behind it is so distinctive that it will likely be a love-it-or-hate-it prospect for all audience members. Either you’re able to get on Fuller’s wavelength or not, but the freshness and boldness of “Dust Bunny” are cause for celebration, regardless of which side you find yourself. There’s nothing else like it, and in a world of soulless IP extensions and hackily formulaic originals that might as well be soulless IP extensions, a film as unique as “Dust Bunny” feels extra special.
