“Dust Bunny” Isn’t Imaginative Enough

Dust Bunny (Bryan Fuller, 2025) 2½ out of 5 stars

After years spent creating offbeat and terrifying characters on TV, acclaimed showrunner Bryan Fuller (Paramount+’s Star Trek: Discovery series) makes his feature directorial debut with Dust Bunny. We follow Aurora (Sophie Sloan), a young girl convinced that a monster under her bed ate her family. With no one else to rely on, she hires her intriguing neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), a professional hitman, to kill it. At first, the neighbor doesn’t believe Aurora’s story, insisting that monsters aren’t real. But as the two face old threats from his occupation, they come to realize that different kinds of monsters exist. On paper, this should be a creative and darkly humorous fantasy film, but its overreliance on poor visual effects (VFX) prevents it from resonating.

Visually, Dust Bunny is trying to feel like a children’s storybook-come-to-life. Fuller opts for a Wes Anderson-esque color palette, flooding Aurora’s apartment with saturated yellows, greens, and pinks. It adds a sense of childish whimsy to an otherwise dark premise. The only problem is that Fuller puts so much effort into the apartment set that he neglects the film’s other locations. Almost every exterior (and a few interiors) are shot on poorly composited chroma-key backgrounds that clash with the established aesthetic.

For example, when Aurora first encounters her intriguing neighbor, she witnesses him battle a group of henchmen hiding under a Chinese dragon puppet. There’s plenty of interesting stunt work, but it’s obscured by smoke in a generic CGI dark alley. Without tactile sets or motivated lighting, nothing about the sequence feels authentic. Thankfully, the same cannot be said for the titular monster. Teased throughout the film as a menacing force beneath Aurora’s floorboards, the dust bunny gets quite a few scares out of sound design alone. You don’t need to see it when you can hear it devour screaming adults. Unfortunately, the rest of the film lacks that same level of creativity.

To his credit, Fuller mines plenty of gallows humor out of the situation. One memorable sequence has the neighbor teaching Aurora how to chop up a cadaver in a shower. But as the two learn about each other’s’ backstories, they bond over shared childhood trauma. Circumstance may have brought them together, but now they have a chance to heal each other. However, Dust Bunny doesn’t trust the audience enough to infer this on their own. Multiple characters just state this idea outright, including the neighbor’s handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver, Call Jane). It feels like the film’s unnecessarily holding your hand.

As is, Dust Bunny wants to be an impactful piece of fantasy about the importance of listening to children. Mikkelsen’s scenes with Sloan are genuinely compelling to watch. However, Fuller struggles to stick to his intended aesthetic. It’s jarring going from ornate, flowery hallways to VFX shots straight out of Spy Kids. Furthermore, for such a talented writer, Fuller’s script isn’t layered enough to leave a lasting impression. The end result is a film lacking the imagination its heroine has in spades.

George W. Campbell

George W. Campbell is a director/screenwriter/editor from Bowie, Maryland, whose films focus on themes of family and personal relationships. As a Nicaraguan-American filmmaker, he aims to highlight specific parts of his culture and personal experiences (songs, dances, foods, and language).