Bryan (Hannibal: the Series) Fuller's Dust Bunny eluded me for far too long, but it's now a headliner on HBO Max, and so, at long last, I was able to experience its surreal splendor.
The movie centers on a girl named Aurora, played by Sophie Stone, who harbors a creature under her bed. It kills her foster parents (and the couple isn't the first it's reputedly consumed). In True Grit fashion, she decides to hire a hitman, played by Hannibal lead, Mads Mikkelsen, a stealthy gent who lives in Room 5B of her New York City residence. (She knows "5B" is an assassin, since she watched him slay a series of assailants in Chinatown.) The cynical mercenary believes that whoever killed Aurora's parents meant to kill him and tells his "handler," Sigourney Weaver's Laverne, about the situation. This leads to a complex and dangerous succession that includes a suspicious social worker, Sheila Atim's Brenda, and a ruthless duo played by David Dastmalchian and Rebecca Henderson.
For the most part, the story is told through Aurora's eyes, in a manner comparable to the youth-propelled Invaders from Mars and Phantasm, though filled with far greater whimsy, a la Martin Scorsese's Hugo. For one, Aurora's surroundings are stylized in both color and scope, her main hub resembling a spruced-up version of Los Angeles' Bradbury Building. To add to the colorful palette, Aurora's segues between quiet desperation and deal-making are heightened by a consistent, unearthly mood, which sometimes makes it difficult to discern what's real and what's reverie, although I suspect that was Fuller's full intent.
Mikkelsen is the movie's supreme scene-stealer, thanks to the skillful way he dispatches his opponents, some of whom (one should infer) do, indeed, wish to eliminate Aurora, since she does know a little too much from both ends of the spectrum.
Stone is good, too, as the wide-eyed heroine, who only wants to stop the creature from killing, and Weaver gives her quirkiest portrayal to date, often wavering between by-the-book silliness and Ripley-esque steeliness.
Due to is offbeat execution, Dust Bunny won't be to everyone's liking. (It comes across like a blur of Luc Besson's Leon and Rob Reiner's North, with the aforementioned, kid-cut thrillers dominating.) Even so, Dust Bunny's motif remains monster oriented from start to finish, and for those who fancy frightful anomalies (whether insinuated, full-fledged or some place in between), this one has much to offer.