Watching "Dust Bunny" is like stepping into one of Bryan Fuller’s fever dreams — meticulously crafted, strikingly weird, and just a touch too committed to its own sensations. Fuller’s first feature film doesn’t just wear his creative DNA on its sleeve; it burrows into the frame and rearranges it, much like the film’s own titular terror lurking beneath the floorboards. It’s obvious from the opening minutes that this isn’t a movie designed to fit comfortably into anyone’s expectations — not critics’, not mainstream audiences’, and certainly not the average mouth-breathing horror fan.
That said, it's often deliciously strange, genuinely inventive, and frequently beautiful in a way only Fuller can manage. The sets, props, and costumes are a tactile, off-kilter amusement park of design — environments that feel dreamed rather than constructed. You can see the care in every surface, every choice of hue and texture, and that labor-of-love energy is intoxicating when it’s working.
But here’s the rub: much like Fuller’s creative flair, the film’s artistic ambitions sometimes telescope inward on themselves. The ultra-wide aspect ratio — a bold, borderline experimental choice — does support the claustrophobic conceit (the whole movie literally makes you scan the floor), yet it also feels like a self-inflicted penalty when you watch it on anything smaller than a theatrical screen. Your eyes are constantly chased from one edge of the frame to the other, and that can be exhausting in ways that add to the thematic tension, but also distract from it. On a laptop or TV, it’s not merely a stylistic flourish — it becomes a chore, a visual contortion that’s more headache-inducing than immersive.
Fuller’s strength — his peculiar, unshakeable vision — is also his biggest creative double-edge. There’s no question he knows precisely what he wants Dust Bunny to be, and more importantly, what he refuses to let it become. That certainty manifests in narrative decisions that feel principled rather than pragmatic, none more effective than his rejection of the tired “it was all in the kid’s head” escape hatch. By insisting the monster is real within the film’s internal logic, Fuller commits fully to the premise, raising the stakes and freeing the performances from irony or ambiguity. It’s a choice that exemplifies his artistic resolve — and also explains why his work so often feels uncompromising, for better and for worse.
Mads Mikkelsen’s hitman neighbor, stripped of most conventional hero cues, is quietly magnetic. He oscillates effortlessly between hulking menace and awkward, deadpan tenderness, giving the film a strange emotional center. Sophie Sloan’s Aurora anchors the story with expressive confidence; she’s not merely adorable, she’s resolute, and her dynamic with Mikkelsen’s character, playful and bizarre, gives the narrative its heart. Sigourney Weaver chews scenery with gleeful delight, reminding you that even in a story about tiny horrors under beds, there’s room for unhinged joy.
Humor crops up in odd, unpredictable places — more often a partial miss than a belly laugh — yet there are genuine moments of levity that take you unawares. And that’s the thing with Dust Bunny: when it works, it works like a charm — surprising, weirdly poignant, and infectiously fun. But it doesn’t always hit its marks. Some sequences feel visually disjointed, and the narrative momentum occasionally flags under the weight of its own stylistic indulgences.
Ultimately, this is a Fuller movie through and through: intensely personal, defiantly peculiar, visually sumptuous, and regularly too much — but rarely dull. It’s a film that feels built for the big screen, where the bizarre textures and maximalist whimsy can breathe. It’s not flawless, it doesn’t always cohere, and on smaller displays its formal choices can grate rather than enchant. But there’s a kind of rough magic here too — a story that earns its moments of sweetness and strangeness in equal measure.
"Dust Bunny" won’t convert the uninitiated, and it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But for those willing to embrace its odd rhythm and let its off-kilter heart beat on its own terms, there’s a lot here to enjoy and unpack. It’s the work of a distinctive artist still finding his footing in a new medium — and that’s part of what makes it lovable, frustrating, and, yes, worth seeing even if it doesn’t quite become the classic it aims to be.
7.8/10
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