Dust Bunny (2025) - Not Kids Movie And An Adult Thriller - REVIEW

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This movie is one of the reasons why I couldnt watch some of the tv series I follow yesterday, my wife wanted to watch a movie and one of my son sat with us, its funny but the two reasons she wanted to watch it because it is a fantasy movie and the damn chicken lamp, btw SPOILERS AHEAD. After watching Dust Bunny I cannot say I felt pumped about what I saw yes it had its cool action scenes and some tender moments but I felt more like confused on what the hell Bryan Fuller was trying to do with this thing because this movie never figures out what it wants to be and just ends up feeling messy when it should be simple and fun. The setup sounds adorable right, little girl is scared of a monster that lives under the floorboards and hires the hitman living next door to kill it for her, she even steals cash from the church collection plate to pay him which I thought was pretty funny in a twisted way, are we showing stealing is good now? to kill monsters?. Then Fuller throws in all these John Wick style shootouts and secret assassin societies moves and none of it clicks together like it should because he cannot decide if this is a kids movie about facing fears or an action movie about killers or some emotional thing about foster care stuff, so I felt everything just get all smooshed together fighting for screen time but on the surface it still looks cool and moving. The best moments are when Mads Mikkelsen and Sophie Sloan are just sitting there talking to each other and building this strange connection between a hired killer and a foster kid who keeps losing families to this creature, those scenes work because you can see both actors putting in effort to make it feel real even when the script is not giving them much. Mads plays this guy called "Intriguing Neighbor" sounds ridiculous because during the movie other characters refer to him as "Resident 5B" or just "5B" basically his appartment number, he thinks the monster is fake and that bad guys just killed her parents by accident because they were aiming for him instead since he lives right next door. The girl Aurora is not buying any of it though, she knows what she saw and she is sure this thing ate her foster family, which when you think about it is crazy and should have way more attention from authorities than just one FBI lady named Brenda poking around asking questions every now and then.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23172090/
• Platform: PRIME VIDEO

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Sigourney Weaver shows up as the villain boss lady named Laverne who runs this whole assassin network and I hate to say this but she was not good at all and honestly been the villain is one of the hardest jobs most of the time, her scenes felt wooden and I was not buying whatever vibe she was trying to bring to the character even though she looks fantastic and wears these crazy high heels that work as guns which is a cool idea on paper. The big reveal is that she is actually Mads mom which should hit harder than it does but we get zero backstory on their relationship or why she raised him to be a killer or why she is willing to put a hit out on a little kid just because the kid saw his face, it just happens and then the movie moves on without letting it sink in or mean anything. Her death scene where the monster eats her should feel like justice or catharsis but it just feels flat because we never got to know her beyond surface level evil lady stuff, she walks around the apartment trying to shoot Aurora while Mads is yelling at her to get off the floor because the monster comes up through it if you touch the ground, and she goes you know how much it hurts me when you call me mom, which is supposed to be emotional I guess but it comes out of nowhere so who cares really. The monster itself is the most disappointing part of the whole MOVIE because the design is way too CGI heavy when it desperately needed practical effects to make it feel like an actual creature instead of a video game blob, we are talking about something that lives under floors and eats anyone who touches the ground which is such a goofy fun concept but Fuller treats it like serious horror instead of leaning into the camp and making it weird and gross in a tactile way. Even the title makes no sense because the thing is not a dust bunny at all, its just this big hairy mass with teeth that moves through solid surfaces like water and looks like bad rendering from a PlayStation 3 cutscene, I kept waiting for them to explain why its called Dust Bunny but they never bother to justify the name at all.

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Fuller said in interviews that he made this as a gateway horror movie for young girls which is a nice idea but in my opinion there is way too much gunfire and heavy themes about loneliness and foster care for kids to stay locked in and adults are gonna get bored waiting for something interesting to actually happen because the pacing drags so much once you get past the first act. From a breaf search about this movie it seems this whole project started as an episode for the Amazing Stories reboot and it really shows in how thin everything feels stretched out to feature length. The action scenes are fine I suppose but they feel out of place in a movie that should be more about the relationship between the hitman and the kid, there is a big shootout near the end where FBI agents and assassins are all trying to kill each other while the monster pops up and starts eating people, and it should be exciting but it just goes on too long and feels chaotic without any real stakes because you do not care about most of these characters dying anyway since they were barely in the movie before this. The opening action sequence in Chinatown where Resident 5B fights a bunch of guys during a festival while Aurora watches from the rooftops is actually pretty solid, that one has a fairy tale quality with the dragon costume and the way its shot from her perspective as she sees him as this monster slayer, I cant denied some of this scenes are exciting but the rest of the action never captures that same energy again and just feels like generic shootouts you have seen in better movies a hundred times before. When the movie gets to the ending where Aurora realizes she can control the monster because she wished for it on a shooting star I was just ready for it to be over, the movie runs about 106 minutes and it feels every minute of that runtime because there is not enough here to justify the length, would have worked way better as a tight forty minute short or even just the original TV episode Fuller planned before expanding it into a full feature.

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The production design is probably the only thing that really works all the way through, whoever did the art direction deserves credit because the apartment looks gorgeous with all this vintage furniture and that chicken lamp is what got my wife to watch this movie so thanks who ever created it, the thing looks hilarious and when its on the light bulb is right where the egg comes out. Aurora also does this thing that she rides around the apartment on this giant brass pig to avoid touching the floor, she even says at one point that the floor is lava so she has to stay off it which should be more fun than it ends up being because Fuller keeps undercutting it with overly serious drama about her dead foster parents and her fear of abandonment, honestly if they would have taking a Monster Inc like approach would have been excellent, but the movie really needed to just pick a lane and commit to it instead of trying to have it both ways. Sigourney has this whole scene where she is eating at a fancy restaurant covered in flowers and she then unhinges her jaw like a snake which is a cool character moment that shows she is not entirely human or at least not normal, but then the movie never follows up on that idea or explains what she actually is beyond just a weird lady who runs assassins. The FBI agent Brenda played by Sheila Atim is solid in her few scenes and she has great chemistry with Mads during the shootout when they are both trapped in the bathroom trying not to touch the floor while the creature moves underneath them, that whole sequence is tense and works better than most of the movie because it keeps things small and focused instead of trying to juggle ten different plot threads at once.

At the end it tries to be all ambiguous and artsy with Resident 5B and Aurora driving off together while the monster shadow follows them and I guess the idea is that she is stuck with this monster forever now since she created it with her wish and it will keep eating anyone who gets close to her for the rest of her life, but it does not fell solid because we spent so little time actually understanding what this creature is or how it works or why it only goes after certain people, it reminds me of 28 Years Later, how disconnected it is from the infected from the start. Fuller clearly loves Mads from working with him on Hannibal and wrote this role specifically for him which is cool to have someone backing up you so hard but the story feel like it needs a couple of adjustments to figure out what it was actually trying to tell instead of throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it would stick, pick the John Wick action stuff or pick the dark fairy tale about childhood fears or pick the emotional drama about foster kids but do not try to do all three at once because none of them get enough room to breathe. Sophie Sloan does good work as Aurora considering this is her first movie, she is not too precocious or annoying which is rare for child actors in roles like this but even she cannot save scenes where the dialogue is clunky or where Fuller is asking her to carry emotional weight the script has not earned yet. If you got a kid who likes weird creepy stuff then maybe this movie is for him, my kid love it, my wife said it was ok same as I did but this is the kind of movie that I wouldnt watch more than once in fact if it wasnt for my wife I probably would have never watch since it was not on my bucket list, that mix between fantasy and adult action man who saves the days is not my style. I give this movie an ok 7 out of 10 and this is specifically because of the visuals, not terrible at all and you wont hate it but not good enough to remember either, just another movie that had a cool idea and fumbled things by trying to be too many things at once instead of doing one thing really well.

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