An eight-year-old girl asks her scheming neighbor for help in killing the monster under her bed that she thinks ate her family.
Chuck says:
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amelie,” John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China,” Henry Selick’s “Coraline,” and Luc Besson’s “The Professional” all came to mind as I watched “Dust Bunny,” the big screen directing debut of Bryan Fuller. The television writer, known for the quirky sense of humor he’s brought to such shows as “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal,” is an acquired taste. What with a pastry chef who can resurrect the dead in the former and a serial killer gourmand the hero of the latter, you know anything Fuller creates will march to the beat of its own drum.
That’s certainly the case with “Bunny,” its story calculated to alienate those who cling to plausibility and be embraced by champions of the offbeat. Aurora (Sophie Sloan), is a precocious young girl who’s convinced a monster resides under her bed. Fuller makes sure we’re on her side from the start, giving us a glimpse of a small bunny made of dust, one that transforms into something monstrous as time goes on. Of course, her foster parents don’t believe her…that is until it’s too late and they end up dead. Aurora is convinced the monster in question is responsible, so she does what every eight-year-old would do; she hires a hitman to take out the imaginary (?) culprit.
Good thing one lives next door. Never referred to by name, she’s seen her neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) in action and, in the film’s cleverest scene, decides to rob one of the communion plates at a local church to pay him. After being hired, our intrepid killer checks out Aurora’s apartment to see exactly what’s going on. The girl’s parents are not to be found, and he’s convinced they were killed by mistake by someone out to get him. How he comes to that conclusion, I don’t know, but it makes for a convenient reason for him to help Aurora.
Before all is said and done, the assassin’s handler (Sigourney Weaver) is drawn into these shenanigans as is a rival killer (David Dastmalchian), all of them converging in Aurora’s apartment where they make a horrific discovery. All of this plays out in a highly stylized, garish world, its colors bright enough to cause eye strain, its settings so ornate, I was often saying to myself, “Look at that ornate setting.” The production design is sharply rendered but it all becomes too much, ultimately distracting rather than immersive.
The script is agonizingly repetitious, a streamlined narrative not a consideration when Fuller’s intent is to be quirky above all else. Missed opportunities abound where the existence of the dust bunny and Aurora’s relationship to it. It’s hinted at that it is the personification of her own feelings of anger and resentment, but none of this is explored fully. Unlike “Sketch,” from earlier this year, not enough of connection is made between our young heroine and the titular creature, Fuller content to take a more obvious, lazier narrative route.
I’m not sure who the audience is for this film. Too scary for kids and too nonsensical for adults, I suppose it may appeal to ‘tweens with vivid imaginations. I have no doubt this will fail at the box office but will eventually be embraced as a cult classic by a legion of loyal fans. It’s odd combination of violence, whimsy, and horror played before a kaleidoscopic background will have its admirers. Like a needy child clamoring for attention, “Bunny” is a calculated exercise in style that jettisons coherency in its efforts to impress with just how clever and avant garde it is. It fails on both counts, coming off as trite and desperate instead.
1 Star
Pam says:
“Dust Bunny” will certainly make you reconsider those pesky little tumbleweeds that collect in the corners of your home. In this dialogue-light thriller, we meet young Aurora, played by Sophie Sloan, who lives with her foster parents in an aging apartment building. She’s terrified to fall asleep, warning—with the sparse language the film allows her—that a monster is trying to eat her. The adults reassure her, naturally, until they are abruptly devoured themselves. Left alone, Aurora follows a neighbor, portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen, and soon realizes he possesses unusually refined monster-fighting skills. She promptly hires him to kill the beast.
What follows is a genre mash-up that lands somewhere between Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino: dark, violent, occasionally flirtatious with comedy, and yet never fully embracing any singular tone. A stray one-liner may hint at humor, but the levity is swiftly buried, much like the Dust Bunny himself, beneath heavy, dark floorboards. The film becomes increasingly repetitive: monster bad, hunter hunting monster. We see that the hunter is conflicted, possibly starting a surrogate-father dynamic, but this thread never develops into a coherent emotional arc, just like all the others. Writer-director Bryan Fuller seems unwilling to commit to one tonal direction, and the film suffers for it.
Mikkelsen, as always, is compelling and capable of carrying far more than he’s given here, and Sigourney Weaver brings presence to a role that feels similarly underutilized. Sloan shows genuine promise, but the script gives her little opportunity to shine. The creature design and special effects are impressively unsettling and this becomes a child’s nightmare fully realized, however, the film’s violence and intensity push it well beyond any family-friendly categorization. (It is R-rated.) Meanwhile, adults looking for narrative substance or stylistic consistency may find themselves disengaged.
Ultimately, “Dust Bunny” never decides what it wants to be, and the result is a film that is too frightening for children, too thin for adults, and too scattered to satisfy fans of any particular genre. Mikkelsen remains a draw and while he rarely misjudges a project, both he and Weaver may prefer this one be swept quickly under the rug.
1 Star
