Film Review: Dust Bunny

Directed by: Bryan Fuller; Runtime: 106 minutes
Grade: B+

The landscape of a child’s imagination continues to be a remarkable place for the fantasy genre to thrive, notably for those stories with bleak tones and symbolic ideas that sweep up children into dark circumstances beyond what would typically be considered appropriate for their age. Explorations of physical trauma and mistreatment, of wartime grief and loss, of drug abuse and deception might be disguised as fanciful journeys and mysteries occurring around kids in peril, which can be unsettling yet also beautiful in the hands of artists who appreciate the delicate power of the imagination to combat reality. Pushing Daisies and Hannibal creative force Bryan Fuller has the unique grasp on the line between reality and fantasy that has elevated similar masterstrokes of this R-rated dark fairy tale subgenre, a grasp both morbid and gorgeous that’s uniquely qualified to bring Dust Bunny into the world, a hyper-stylized action thriller powered by the wishes of a girl for her wrongdoers to be gobbled up by a monster of her creation.

Set close to Chinatown in New York City, the story centers on Aurora, a curious and conscientious 10-year-old who lives in an apartment with her family. Briggt liggts and fireworks take her onto the streets one evening where she believes to have witnessed the slaying of a dragon by her "Intriguing Neighbor" (Mads Mikkelsen) from a connecting apartment next to hers. What she actually witnesses is the slaying of a disguised gang of targets by the man in 5B, a professional hit man. Swayed by her side of the story, Aurora's neighbor gets enlisted to help in slaying another monster: the dust bunny living under her bed, who doesn’t let anyone nearby touch the floor without being violently consumed ... not even her now-deceased parents. Curious about the nature of her parents’ death, the neighbor in 5B decides to look into it with a new companion by his side, but even he grows surprised by the monstrous dangers that emerge around Aurora.

Those who have seen Valhalla Rising and The Salvation know that Mads Mikkelsen has more than shrewd villains and wrought victims in his character rang, as he’s able to summon a smoldering, durable antiheroic warrior into his uniquely dashing camera presence. Here, his assassin character isn’t given much room for the kind of depth one might find in similar roguish companions like Jean Reno’s Leon or Lee Pace’s Masked Bandit, largely because the enigmas surrounding Aurora have so much dramatic and situational gravity that they swallow up opportunities for further inspection of the “Intriguing Neighbor” in 5B, outside of palpable guilt regarding death. Mikkelsen sure looks and sounds the part, with casual swoops of his silver and dark hair shrouding his face as he maneuvers around explosives and utilizes martial-arts grappling techniques, while his exquisite chemistry with young actress Sophie Sloan captures both the expected hesitation and the unique suspiciousness involving the girl’s perception of what’ll put him in danger with her monster. You want the Intriguing Neighbor in 5B to exist in as iconic of a light as other cinematic assassins, but the narrative tools at Mikkelsen’s disposal can’t quite make that happen.

Instead, Dust Bunny adds richness to the space around “Intriguing Neighbor” through the people with whom he interacts and the places he visits while learning more about his companion and her situation, deciphering what we can from untrustworthy allies like Sigourney Weaver’s wryly gleeful Laverne and soaking up the battlegrounds where he runs into brisk, dangerous shootouts and brawls befitting his profession. Through the lens of cinematographer Nicole Horst Whitaker, Bryan Fuller and his production team construct a borderline-surreal world out of their take on Chinatown that relishes being somewhat timeless, archaic and old-world yet modern and polished. Vivid colors and lustrous architectural details can’t help but recall the iconoclastic underworld of John Wick in tea houses, alleyways, and one badass restaurant with a shark tank in it, but there are also more poetic and metaphorical aesthetic touches -- notably in Aurora’s apartment -- that form into a maze-like dreaminess reminiscent of the works of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillermo Del Toro in its depiction of Aurora’s troubled mental space.

With time, Dust Bunny grows in confidence and reveals more of the monster at the center of the story, both figuratively and literally. Throughout the dimly-lit atmosphere of the apartment’s fantastical deep green glow, wood floorboards start to flutter and crack while hungry teeth and hairy spikes emerge in herky-jerky bursts on cue, leaning into the attitude of a straight-up creature feature with wild visual effects bringing it snarling to life. Somewhat obviously, Dust Bunny begins to thrive on the mystery of the monster’s creation and existence while hit men and government agents converge on this mythically-adorned apartment, and the point when the dust bunny becomes this tangible, observable force of nature also marks when Bryan Fuller’s suspenseful momentum ramps up and doesn’t stop. Dark fantastical horror takes over as the dominant force with gunfire and close-quartered combat as disruptions, peppered with charismatic faces -- David Dastmalchian as a leader of hitmen out for Aurora; Sheila Atim as his counterpoint, a government caseworker -- that evoke genuine danger and fear amid chaotic, destructive action sequences in tight spaces.

Figuring out whether the monster’s real or part of Aurora’s headspace turns into both the most intriguing and the most frustrating aspect of <>Dust Bunny, and it becomes something of a necessary consideration once the monster under Aurora’s bed starts taking responsibility for immediate deaths in the situation. Amid a wave of choppy, sensationalized monster-movie attacks and messy outcomes to converging story threads, writer/director Fuller leaves little room for interpretation in a cinematic climax that might’ve actually benefitted from more reading between the lines, more metaphorical playfulness in conveying the nature of the beast and how it translates to Aurora’s trauma and grief. Despite forcing itself to lose meaningful ambiguity as the dust settles, any lack of subtlety or subtext doesn’t take away from the bittersweet impact of the journey’s outcome. Dust Bunny wholeheartedly commits to building a contemporary fantasy full of genuine peril and allegorical intent that respects the beasts rumbling within neglected or mistreated children, and while it doesn’t reach the heights of other kindred surreal adventures of the subgenre, it sinks its teeth into generous amounts of creative, expressive thrills.