If you just read the plot synopsis, Hannibal and Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller’s feature film directorial debut sounds a lot like Luc Besson’s 1994 film Léon: The Professional. Both feature young girls who ask a hitman who happens to live next door to kill the monster that orphaned them. But despite those similarities, Dust Bunny is nothing like Besson’s moody thriller. Fuller has instead crafted what John Wick might have looked like if it were made as a collaboration between Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. It’s a bizarre, ultra-stylish fairy tale definitely worth watching now that it’s available to stream on HBO Max.
Fuller has always had a penchant for visual flair, from the dreamy world of Pushing Daisies to the mythic scope of American Gods to the artistic kills of Hannibal. But he’s really outdone himself in Dust Bunny, which beautifully captures the feel of being trapped in a childhood nightmare. Eight-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) lives in New York in a whimsically decorated apartment that feels like a fusion between a dollhouse and the eponymous building in Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. While her parents assume she just has a big imagination, Aurora is absolutely convinced there’s a monster living under her bed that will devour anyone who steps on the apartment’s floor. She finds a potential savior in her enigmatic new neighbor in unit 5B (Mads Mikkelsen).
Dressed in a tracksuit, Mikkelsen might not look as stylish as Keanu Reeves, but he fills the John Wick role neatly by adopting the same flat affect that hints at emotional depth. 5B inhabits an equally weird world – he’s first seen in action murdering an entire armed gang that is manning a dragon dance puppet in a battle that involves cleavers, shuriken, and fireworks. The real action is juxtaposed with striking animation to depict how Aurora sees the fight, with 5B becoming a literal dragon slayer. Aurora heads to church (an excuse for Fuller to toss in a joyful musical number) and gleefully steals the collection plate to pay 5B’s fee.
When 5B finds evidence of foul play in Aurora’s home, he suspects her parents were killed by someone looking for him. It turns out 5B has a lot of enemies and questionable allies, each with their own ridiculous wardrobes and combat styles. A stealth assassin tries to ambush 5B in an outfit matching the wallpaper in Aurora’s apartment, while another killer uses a dragon-shaped gun to blast open a door. 5B’s handler Laverne (Sigourney Weaver) wears stilettos that double as guns. The film has a body count that would make Wick proud.
But while 5B assumes Aurora has accidentally gotten caught up in his ultraviolent world, he underestimates how much danger he’s gotten into by helping her. Dust Bunny resembles an early Tim Burton film – a dark fantasy that blends whimsy and genuinely disturbing visuals. In order to avoid the ominously shifting wood tiles beneath her, Aurora uses a hobby horse to paddle a giant hippo statue around the apartment, shrieking at everyone else who enters to get off the floor. Fuller powerfully captures her dread as she lies in bed and watches the creature dig a corkscrew-shaped hole in the ground before tentatively reaching out with something between a tentacle and a claw to spear a grape and drag it back below. When the creature is revealed in all its toothy glory, it looks like a monster from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are out for vengeance against anyone who would send their kid to bed without supper.
Fuller has already proven his genius as a TV showrunner, and Dust Bunny demonstrates the madness he’s capable of in a feature film. The twisted fairy tale has its own strange version of happily ever after, so it’s unlikely that Dust Bunny will kick off another John Wick-style franchise where Mikkelsen finds a new batch of strange hitmen to dispatch. But you should take the opportunity to watch the film at home just to enjoy the dark magic in its bizarre juxtaposition of stylish killers shooting each other and the horror of a very hungry bunny that’s the stuff of a child’s nightmare.
Dust Bunny is now streaming on HBO Max.
