Be it Pushing Daisies or the magnificence that was was Hannibal, Bryan Fuller is known for creating diverse, weird, surreal universes that can veer into sugary sweetness into cold horror at the flick of a creative wrist. However, while the prospect of seeing a fourth season of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham circle each other and “flirt” across some of the most stunning and haunting murder tableaux you’ve ever seen becomes ever more distant, at least Fuller is keeping himself busy by embarking on his feature debut.
While no one was particularly expecting Fuller to take a more conventional route with his first film, I still don’t think that anyone was expecting Dust Bunny, a quirky, action fantasy that has us meet at the crossroads of Burton, Besson and Jeunet and then batters us senseless with fantastical whimsy. Can this vibrant but bizarre opening gambit sate our thirst for the Fuller offerings that were never meant to be while opening the prospect of more surreal wonders like the maw of a monster spawned from a child’s imagination?
Aurora is a young girl who has been moved from foster family to foster family after her original mother and father mysteriously went missing, but as she lays awake one night, she’s horrified to see a few fluffs of dust float in through the window and form themselves into a small, literal bust bunny under her bed which immediately burrows into the floorboards while leaving no trace. Why this child would be so worried about a small, sentient bit of lint, we don’t know, but she’s intimidated to the point where she’ll no longer set her feet on the floor even though her foster patents tell her there’s nothing to be afraid of.
At the same time, Aurora starts to notice the comings and goings of her mysterious neighbour who lives alone in apartment 5B and after following him one night, witnesses him kill a bunch of men disguised in a dragon costume to blend in with a parade. Convinced that her neighbour is in the monster killing business, Aurora decides to hire him to kill the monster under her bed that has since grown into a gargantuan, carnivorous Bunny and has hungrily devoured her latest foster parents the way its devoured everyone who’s taken her in.
Obviously, what with 5B bring a hardened killer, he’s reluctant to believe in the existence of such things as giant, snaggle-tooth monster bunnies and deduces that someone has put a hit out on this him but they killed her family by mistake and her imagination has proccessed it into something more palatable. But while reporting to his handler, Laverne in order to figure this mystery out, it kicks off a farcical series of events that soon snares yet more hired killers and the FBI who all promptly close in on Aurora’s apartment block. However, while 5B prepares to fight a war for this innocent little girl, a single question still floats in the air like a lone firefly: is there actually a giant, monster rabbit lurking under the floorboards waiting to gobble anyone up at a moment’s notice?
While certainly flawed when trying to invoke a child’s fairy tale with adult eyes (or would that be an adult’s adventure through a child’s eyes) Fuller’s cinematic debut proves to be every bit as weird and wonderful as you’d hope it would be. Essentially Luc Besson’s Léon funneled through the visual prism of Jean-Pierre Jeunet with some Tim Burton monsters thrown in for good measure, Dust Bunny is both a joy to behold and slightly frustrating to process as the story lightly treads between stylish actioner, mature fantasy and even a rampaging monster mash all in one. Undoubtedly a willfully off-beat oddity that relishes every directorial florist it can muster, it’s criminally easy to get lost in its visual flare that contains some eye catching sets, some neat visual touches and Mads Mikkelsen wearing arguably the most distinctive wardrobe you’ll see all year.
It’s not every day that a film seems determined to cram the tones of Léon, Delicatessen and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure into a single movie, and to be fair, at times Dust Bunny can’t quite handle it; but a great part of the fun of the film is watching Fuller try. After all, big swings like this don’t come around that often and the fact that the movie hits way more than it misses is something of a godsend. Locking in the vibrant colours and the eccentric tone is a wide-eyed, yet engrossing performance by Sophie Sloan who wisely keep her character’s precociousness continents away from brattish and annoying as we see things through her bambi-sized peepers. Countering her innocence with a world weary detachment is the damaged 5B (few people in this film are awarded an actual name), who understandably takes on unwanted responsibilities when he surmises that Aurora’s misfortunes can only be from a direct result of his actions as an assassin.
However, Mikkelsen is obviously digging playing a very irresponsible adult, continuously failing to pronounce Aurora’s name right and sporting some impressive, John Wick-style prowess despite pushing 60.
Along with Mikkelsen, the cast features an array of exaggerated characters who all plug into this fanciful world such as David Dastmalchian’s clipped killer, Sheila Atim’s opportunistic FBI agent and, best of all, Sigourney Weaver’s exasperated fixer who wears a very special calibre of shoe.
However, while everyone is on board with Fuller’s particular vision, it’s the ostentatious sights and sounds that really makes the film stand out. From a hitman managing to blend into a particularly garish brand of wallpaper thanks to his bizarre fashion choice to 5B slaughtering a bunch of killers hidden under a Chinese dragon costume which makes Aurora thinks she’s witnessing an actual monster killer in action, the movie is at its strongest when it’s indulging fully in its twisty turny world. However, when actual logic demands to intrude, Fuller’s more esoteric story choices seem to confuse rather than enlighten as certain elements are left up in the air that probably might have been better served being explained. Elsewhere, the design for the titular Dust Dunny itself is a marvelous design, however, the old school effects buff wishes that it was more of a practical or hybrid creation as sometimes the CGI tends to overwhelm. I mean, if Jim Henson’s company can faithfully breathe life into Freddy Fazbear and company in the Five Night At Freddy’s films, there’s no reason they couldn’t have taken a good shot at the giant, shaggy, buck-toothed cryptid that warps in and out of the apartment floor like a great white shark with a cotton tail.
While Fuller’s fantasy/action opus sometimes ends up getting stuck to its own whimsy like a bug to flypaper, there’s no denying that he’s offered up a debut quite unlike anything else out at the moment. Here’s hoping that he can continue to beguile and enchant on this level, because this Dust Bunny is nothing to be sneezed at.
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