Is 2025 too late for a “from the mind of Bryan Fuller” type jam? Best known for creating queer cult classic TV shows like Pushing Daisies and Hannibal, Fuller has never directed a feature film – until now! Dust Bunny is Fuller’s directorial debut, and it feels like it came out of nowhere. In recent years, Fuller has been best known for TV projects that have gone awry or never made it to the screen, like American Gods and his proposed Christine remake. Due to the slow death of the industry, I had made peace with never getting a real Fuller project ever again. In this regard, Dust Bunny is a minor miracle, even if it ends up as ignored as his best works. With the help of Mads Mikkelsen – Hannibal himself – and Sigourney Weaver, this story of a girl and her monster teeters on the cliff of twee but never tips over. In many ways, this is a lost Roald Dahl tale, without the obscene racism baked into every page.

Aurora (Sophie Sloan) lives in what we’re told is New York City, but seems much closer to a fantastical version of London with clean streets, lavish apartment buildings, and a vibrant Chinatown. Her parents seem nice enough, though they tell her she’s just imagining the monster under her bed. But Aurora knows there’s something down there, avoiding the floor at all costs. One morning, Aurora awakens to find that her parents have become the monster’s latest meal. She seems less horrified than you might expect, an early sign that this really is a fairy tale. After dressing herself, making breakfast, and stealing a church collection plate filled with cash, she does the only sensible thing one can do in this situation – she hires her hitman neighbor to kill the monster.

How does she know her neighbor is a hitman? First of all, he’s played by Mads Mikkelsen. Second, she follows him into the city one night and watches him take out multiple assassins with ease. The action is John Wick-lite, as stylized as the world around them. The film’s real strength comes from the dynamic between the hitman and this little girl. Watching Mads play exasperated with this precocious child is wildly entertaining, especially when he’s forced to explain the situation to his handler (Sigourney Weaver) at a dim sum restaurant.

Is the monster real? What happened to Aurora’s parents? What’s really going on with her housing situation? Nothing is as it seems in Dust Bunny in the best way possible. Going into it, I was concerned it would feel like a TV pilot reconfigured into a feature film, but it truly is a standalone imaginative work from someone who has left his bizarre stamp on American television. Though this theatrical release feels muted, Dust Bunny will be seen by the people who need it most – freak teenagers, weird kids, and the underemployed – when it makes it to streaming.

Dust Bunny
2025
Dir. Bryan Fuller
106 min

Now playing @ Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport and AMC Boston Common