Hare-raising? Surreal ‘DUST BUNNY’ has real teeth…
Aurora is terrified that something very, very bad is lurking under her bed. No-one, not even her foster parents, believe her, but every night she hears terrible noises and the floor trembles. A firefly appears to lead her to a neighbour in her tenement building and when she secretly follows him out into the city, she seems to see him fight off magical assassins and a ferocious dragon. This, she decides, may be the only person who can save her.
However, ‘Resident 5B’ doubts the young girl’s leporidae-laden story and thinks it’s a flight of fancy to deal with more mundane maladies. Besides, her neighbour has very real problems and enemies of his own.
Will he be her saviour or is he already responsible for bringing dangers to Aurora’s door?
*some spoilers*
‘Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies?’ In Bryan Fuller’s feature-length directing debut, death awaits you with large pointy teeth…
While one can list some of the inspirations or touchstones for Dust Bunny (Leon/The Professional meets Monster meets John Wick meets Donnie Darko, by way of Tim Burton?) it’s also true to say that there’s nothing quite like it – which, in itself, is surely the ultimate recommendation.
How much of the film’s visions are real and how many are just a coping mechanism? For the first two-thirds of the film, Fuller deliberately doesn’t fully commit to either stance. Yes, Sophie Sloan’s Aurora and the audience continue to see the beast under her bed (instantly threatening despite its original miniscule form but growing larger and more ferocious with every sighting) and the chaos it seems to bring to her surroundings. But there’s equal validity to Mads Mikkelsen’s ‘Intriguing Neighbor’ and his view that Aurora is just a traumatised child cloaking very real dangers with fantasy. Either version has dramatic chops and possibilities within a delightful, drama-filled choice of dynamic, so it’s almost a shame when the film decides which way it wants to go.
Relative newcomer Sophie Sloan is delightful, delivering the kind of character whose wry view of the world for one so young could be simply pretentious if handled less deftly. Aurora and Sloan can both hold their own in any of the banter and Aurora takes absolutely no bullcrap from those who talk down to her. Yet Sloan also makes Aurora vulnerable and desperate and you end up caring about someone who is revealed to have gone through so much and handled it the only way she knows how.
Mikkelsen plays his hit-man with a quiet weariness, the straight-man to the punchlines being hit around him. He’s tough, weathered and capable but prefers not to make personal connections. He’s great at both the action scenes and in underplaying the chaos (though I can also think of a few other actors who might also have created quite different but equally intriguing performances).
Sigourney Weaver chews the scenery as Laverne, a mobland matriarch who wouldn’t feel out of place at The Continental (if it had a more avant garde delicatessan) and there’s likely a whole film that could have been devoted to the life-and-death business she operates. It’s clear she’d prefer if the hitman didn’t die but would shed only a solitary tear if he gets in her way.
Fuller gives us full scenes with no dialogue, letting the story breath and with a cinematography and production design that speak volumes for themselves. The city is a vast damp, neon-hued metropolis, the corridors are thin and garishly claustrophobic. You may not even notice that many of the characters, including Mikkelsen’s killer don’t have specific names.
This might be his feature-length directing debut, but Fuller has form in presenting stories that have a whimsical narrative married to something much darker. As well as writing extensively (and sometimes controversially) for the Star Trek franchise, he has more independent shows to his name. Pushing Daisies (2007-2009) was a ‘forensic fairy-tale’ that told the story of Ned, a pie-maker who can bring the dead back to life with a single touch, though a second touch returns them to the after-life (which means he can never be truly with his now-revived girlfriend, so they partner up to solve crimes). It ran for two seasons, won multiple enemies and, two decades later there’s rumours of a revival). Dead Like Me (2003-2004 and a follow-up tv movie in 2009) told the story of a petulant teenager killed when the International Space Station’s toilet falls to Earth and who is introduced to the after-life as one of a team of eclectic Grim Reapers, helping them shuffle off this mortal coil. He also created Wonderfalls, worked on American Gods and Hannibal (also with Mikkelsen as the infamous psychopath).
While certainly not aimed at kids – this is a mature story that’s for the young at heart, a Grimm modern fairy tale with European sensibilities that dictates that innocence and guilt are joined at the hip and that happy-ever-afters don’t come without consequence. That’s typical full-on Fuller. It won’t satiate everyone, but it won’t be forgotten in a hurry.
9/10
Dust Bunny is now available on Digital HD from Amazon Video and iTunes and is released by Lionsgate on to DVD and blu-ray on 28th April in the US and 29th May in the UK…