Dust Bunny
Written by Cameron Geiser
Warning: This review is for Dust Bunny, which is a film presented at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. There may be slight spoilers present. Reader discretion is advised.
Image courtesy of the Toronto International film Festival.
My final film of TIFF was this midnight movie written and directed by Bryan Fuller, creator of the Hannibal TV series. Dust Bunny is, as described by Fuller himself, an ode to the creature features of the 1980s, like Gremlins. Intended to be a fun genre film that might creep kids out if they run across it, much like many of us did with some of the more outlandish films back in the day, Fuller's first feature is a perfectly acceptable pulp flick. Dust Bunny has an entertaining high concept in which an eight year old girl, Aurora (Sophie Sloan), hires her neighbor, who moonlights as a hit man to kill the monster under her bed. That neighbor just so happens to be played by Mads Mikkelsen.
Aurora has a problem, you see. Under her bed, and beneath the floorboards dwells a horrific Bunny-like monster that emerges each night to viciously murder anything that touches the floor. Shortly after the film’s opening Aurora's parents are dispatched by the beast, forcing Aurora to fend for herself. After sleeping on the fire escape out of fear one night she watches her neighbor across the hall return home looking like he'd just fought a monster or two. The next night she follows him and watches from afar as he dispatches a dragon. Or, at least that's what Aurora believes she saw, truthfully it was a bunch of assassins in a parade costume of a dragon. So, after robbing a church of one of their collection trays, she hires Mads to kill her monster.
The remainder of the film relies on melding Mads' John Wick adjacent world with the creature feature tone of Aurora's monster problems. The script itself feels a bit clunky at times, not entirely knowing how to meld those two ideas seamlessly. However the supporting cast that lives in that John Wick-lite league of killers had two heavy hitters in Sigourney Weaver as Mads' Boss in this underworld and David Dastmalchian as the leader of another competitive group of assassins. Everyone involved turned in competently cheesy and over the top performances with Mads himself forming the foundation of the film with his traditionally stoic subtleties. Everyone knew the assignment and that is a big part of what made Dust Bunny work overall. Though there were indeed structural things about the script that could use some tweaking, like when to reveal the monster, or whether or not to lean more into the creature feature aspect of the film, Fuller's Dust Bunny is a lot of fun despite a handful of inconsistencies.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.