Directed By Bryan Fuller

Starring – Mads Mikkelsen, Sigourney Weaver, Sophie Sloan

The Plot – An eight-year-old girl named Aurora (Sloan) asks her assassin neighbor (Mikkelsen) for help in killing the monster under her bed that she thinks ate her family.

Rated R for some violence

DUST BUNNY | Official Trailer | December – Only In Theaters

POSITIVES

Following up a highly successful television run that includes the creation of “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal”, Bryan Fuller makes the dazzling dash to the silver screen, conjuring a stylistically entrancing bedtime story capable of transcending expectations and even genres, on its way to another intoxicatingly creative triumph for the writer and director. On the surface, “Dust Bunny” inspires family movie sensibilities, with everything from Isabella Summers whimsically enchanting score, to the atmospheric ambiance painting an imaginatively fantastical outlining of this world, but Fuller’s script delves into the murky and at times hopelessly helpless captivity of child trauma, allowing the movie’s monster to meticulously tread waters of metaphorical and practical meaning, which allows audiences of all ages to indulge in something endearingly unique to the broad strokes of entertainment that Fuller conceives to the movie’s execution. While what the monster represents clearly isn’t anything profoundly rich or three-dimensional, feeling as obvious as the movie’s opening act, it does value trauma in ways that very few kids movies endearingly paint, with an occasional vulnerability to Aurora’s outlining that makes her effortlessly easy to empathize with, even beyond the dreaded disposition of being isolated from her protectors, and while the script keeps the devil of the details mostly at bay, so as not to smother the appeal of the atmosphere, Fuller respects his audience enough to continuously meet them at eye level, giving insight into the devastating circumstances that innocent children face at any given moment. Like his previously mentioned shows, the film is graced with rhythmically engaging and tension-breaking interactions that very much paints the precociousness of Aurora and the irritability of her neighbor accordingly, with a free-flowing banter that not only carves out their infectious chemistry with one another, but also transpires deep-seeded truths about the kind of seedily questionable environment that the little girl was a part of, leveling the audience with the occasionally effective dramatic note, even without sacrificing the integrity of the energetic atmosphere that is among the movie’s greatest strengths. While the film elicits a journey with its characters that maintains entertaining emphasis throughout the duration of its 101-minute runtime, a fact made all the more impressive with an opening ten minute sequence featuring little to no transpiring dialogue between its characters, it’s actually the substantial style of the movie’s imagery that cast me under the spellbinding splendor of mesmerizing choices in the favor of the movie’s production values, brandishing French and Danish trends and architecture, which have always been a subtle part of Fuller’s TV history, but here feel like the unavoidable welcome mat into the meticulousness of every frame entrancing us convincingly with no spare cent being wasted in its minimized budget. Everything from the colorfully radiant set designs between gothic architecture, to the sleekly subversive movements of the lens, helps to give the visual storytelling a sense of place and purpose with the integrity of these scenes, a fact made prominently apparent in Nicole Hirsch Whitaker’s meaningfully conveyed cinematography, which values the integrity of the movie’s many environments in framing just as much she does its characters, especially in the claustrophobic confines of this gloomily dark and ominous apartment. While Whitaker keeps the mystique of the aforementioned monster firmly at bay, leaving the creature’s appearances limited until the blow-off of the climax, the ways she utilizes shadows to feed a disorienting paranoia to the mystique of the speculated creature goes a long way towards making anything feel possible in this world, even as it revels in secondary characters who feel anything other than ordinary, and while Fuller has always been someone who values style as much as substance, with “Hannibal” giving way to imagery that is now known as food porn, his influential touch in this film really feels like the limitless expressiveness of his impulses as a visionary, enriching a one of a kind majestic glow to the presentation that I can’t wait to study firmer during an at home watch. Beyond a story based in mystique and ambiguity, as well as stunning style, the film is also elevated considerably by its masterful performances between Mads Mikkelsen and first time actress, Sophie Sloan, who each bring so much charming cadence and stoicism to respective turns that carve out one irreplaceable friendship to the movie’s foundation. Considering Sloan is an English-bred actress, her American accent never withers in consistency under the movie’s duration, allowing the air of her performance not to be judged by distractingly nagging instances, but rather the confidence and an unapologetic candor of her precise deliveries, and Mikkelsen, while being one of the very best actors working today, maintains meticulousness to the way he approaches every rare but candid delivery, allowing him ample opportunity into some solid laughs at Fuller’s disposal, all the while reveling in a physically demanding role that silences any doubt that at 60 he can’t be a dominating action star in screen presence.

NEGATIVES

In terms of diminishing values to Fuller’s evidential passion project, there is some flawed outlining in the rules of this monster within the script that doesn’t always materialize reflectively in the way the creature is used, particularly during the third act climax, where as many as three glaring instances of compromised consistency make it difficult to properly gauge the established logic of what Fuller spends a whole movie coherently fleshing out. Such an instance pertains to the monster’s desire to only attack at night, which is not only strange because Aurora evades the floor at all hours of the day, using a child’s stroller to keep her feet away from the ground, but also factually false by its spontaneous attack near the movie’s ending, which takes place in the daytime. It’s not majorly compromising to the integrity of the experience, but it definitely outlines that the script could’ve used a once more over to smooth out some of these glaring details of inconsistency, especially when the mystique of the rumored monster is at the forefront of the movie’s selling point. On top of this, for a movie so entranced in so much immaculate style and hypnotic imagery, there is an overreliance on C.G that doesn’t come across as naturally conceived, in order to effectively evade distracting emphasis, and it leaves the impressive outlining of this production a bit underserved by the cheap and inauthentic ways of reaching their ambition. While I wholeheartedly loved the design of this creature, feeling like a mix between the BFG and the moles from Super Mario Bros., their movements and artificial properties surrounding their devastating practices envelope so much artificiality to the execution of the sequence, which doesn’t attain the tangibility to the practical designs of what it’s interacting with, and when you combine it with some greenscreen outside backdrops, during the movie’s opening act, it will take a little longer than expected to reach the depths of my enamored praises for this production, and it makes me wish the film just maintained more of that limited depiction towards the monster, in order to evade the flaws of so much influential artificiality. Lastly, though not a problem of Fuller’s execution, I absolutely hate that this movie somehow received an R-rating, despite so very little of the material coming across as too violent for child audiences. The most ruthlessly forgiving violent impulse that the movie garners pertains to an electric toothbrush going through someone’s eye, without any spilled blood poured from it. Beyond that, much of the violence pertains to the monster eating characters, or the occasional shoot-out, and considering such a rating will limit the extent of the audience that sees this movie, as kids won’t be able to watch it without an adult present, it makes me think the MPAA didn’t actually watch the movie, as there’s nothing in it that I think kids wouldn’t be able to capably handle.

OVERALL
“Dust Bunny” represents a satisfyingly entertaining transition for Bryan Fuller, whose dazzlingly imaginative bedtime story feels like the ideal gateway opportunity for those seeking a chance into the world of horror. With masterfully transfixing style and cinematography oozing a radiantly irresistible charm to the interpretation, as well as charmingly endearing turns from Mads Mikkelsen and Sophie Sloan, Fuller finds a cleverly capable angle to tackle child trauma, proving that the things that go bump in the night under our beds can only be suppressed with Hannibal Lechter there to lend a protectively guiding hand

My Grade: 8.1 or B+