By John Serba

Dust Bunny (now streaming on HBO Max) marks Bryan Fuller’s rather audacious jump from television to film. The creator of Pushing Daisies, Hannibal and numerous Star Trek series wrote and directed this all-style-all-the-time way-offbeat uncategorizable fantasy/comedy/drama about a little girl trying in vain to convince her neighbor that her parents were eaten by the monster under her bed. Said neighbor is a Leon-like hitman pro played by Fuller’s Hannibal Lecter, Mads Mikkelsen, who maintains a stern mug that balances out the considerable charms of his damn-she’s-CUTE co-star Sophie Sloan. Whether the style overwhelms their work is the question.

DUST BUNNY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: For reasons we’ll never know or understand, a breeze sneaks into little Aurora’s (Sloan) bedroom, accumulating dust into a growing tumbleweed that settles under her bed and takes the shape of a certain long-eared critter. Perhaps it took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. It soon will manifest as something much larger, furrier and scarier, caught in quarter- and eighth-glimpses as Aurora takes necessary shelter under her blanket or on the fire escape, for touching the floor means doom. DOOOOOOM. This makes complete sense, but only if you were once a child. Parents? They just don’t understand. Especially Aurora’s. And now they don’t have to understand, because they’re dead, devoured alive. Alas, they were just foster parents. The latest set of foster parents. The others got eaten too. Just like her biological parents. Life – it’s been rough so far for little Aurora.

Down the hall from Aurora lives – well, what is this guy’s name anyway? IMDb calls him “Intriguing Neighbor” and Wikipedia says he’s “Resident 5B,” named after his apartment number. We’ll just call him Mads, since that’s the actor who plays him. Led by a whimsical firefly, Aurora follows Mads into the city, and specifically to a Chinatown back alley, where she sees him make short work of a dragon. Of course, she sees only the shadows of the action – Mads ducked under the fabric of a parade dragon and killed the men operating it. He didn’t slay a monster. So it goes?

Even if Aurora knew the truth, that might not disqualify him for the task she needs done. She’s a bit desperate, you know. Desperate enough to bolt out the church door with the collection plate so she can offer him an assortment of bills and coins totaling $327.42 to kill the monster he doesn’t think exists but she absolutely does and we – well, we can’t quite be sure if it exists because children can be unreliable narrators, but those big round innocent eyes look more like truthful eyes than lying eyes. Meanwhile, Mads believes the “monster” was actually bad guys who were hunting him – having bad guys perpetually hunting you is one of the downsides of being an assassin, or so I’ve heard – and consults with his handler Laverne (Sigourney Weaver), who now sees Aurora as a threat to their operation because she knows Mads’ face and profession. Uh oh. Monster-monsters and human-monsters all want this poor kid dead now. Like I said, rough.  

Photo: Everett Collection

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? So many: Fuller’s visually vibrant quirk is Wes Anderson meets Jean-Pierre Jeunet (especially Amelie or his collaboration with Marc Caro, Delicatessen), the Chinatown set is so very Blade Runner, the scary-bunny stuff is the scariest scary-bunny stuff since Donnie Darko, it covers similar thematic and conceptual territory (and a Weaver supporting performance) with A Monster Calls, and IF kinda played in a similar sandbox, but made quite a mess of it. 

Performance Worth Watching: Funny how Mads and Aurora share a similar stoicism – and just barely buried sadness – isn’t it? Deep into the movie, Sloan deadpans to him, “You could just be my dad” and Mikkelsen responds with a remarkably subtle facial expression that intends to be emotionless but isn’t entirely emotionless. 

Sex And Skin: None.

Photo: Gabor Kotschy / © Roadside Attractions / Courtesy Everett Collection

Our Take: Dust Bunny cleverly teases us with point-of-view, the story playing out in the nebulous space of a child’s imagination where what we see can be subjective. What’s real and what isn’t is the core question, not unlike classic comic Calvin and Hobbes, where Calvin sees a real tiger and everyone else sees a stuffed animal. That the film pretty much definitively answers the question instead of existing in that magical-realist space is somewhat disappointing and anticlimactic, but that’s the corner Fuller paints himself into. Yet he nevertheless finds a way to reach a cute, clever and reasonably satisfying conclusion. 

What it all means is up in the air, though. I’m mostly convinced that the film is an exercise in style and whimsy, its message skewing more toward lookit me, I’m a crazy and eccentric movie than here are some characters who stir up your emotions. Fuller’s aim is purely visual storytelling; much of the first 20-ish minutes of the film is nearly free of dialogue, while sight gags (Sloan riding a large brass hippo on wheels throughout her home so she won’t touch the floor is a terrifically amusing recurring image – where does one acquire a large brass hippo on wheels, and why would one acquire one in the first place, I wonder?), flashy costuming, bold splashes of color (lots of golds and bluish turquoise), beautifully bizarre set design and a degree of Andersonesque symmetry define the film more than what happens, how it happens and who it happens to.

Yet Fuller draws out tender, subtly comic exchanges between Sloan and Mikkelsen, who channel a bit of the Natatlie Portman/Jean Reno chemistry from Leon: The Professional. They bicker and banter, hardheaded and insistent that furry and fearsome bunny-eared monsters do exist, or don’t exist. They’re defined by their certainty. Weaver, David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim deliver enjoyable supporting performances too. There are times when Dust Bunny flirts with dramatic tedium, its story a flimsy fairy tale beneath its borderline-excessive visual pomp. But we’re ultimately left with the warmth that our two leads generate as lonely people who never say they’re lonely, but make their emotions clear anyway – and maybe quell that loneliness within each other. 

Our Call: Dust Bunny is about 50/50 overindulgent eye candy and quietly charismatic performances. The story could use a little more beef, but as it stands, it’s more winner than loser. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.