Dust Bunny

As kids, most of us had things we would or would not do out of fear. For example, I would never let my feet hang over the side of the bed, terrified that something underneath might grab them. That was my big fear. For others, it might’ve been the dark, the closet, the basement—whatever it was, you probably had one. And as we grew up, most of us realized those fears were all for nothing, because the things we were scared of weren’t real.
Bryan Fuller asks a different question: What if they were real? And if they were… could you hire an assassin to kill them?

Aurora (Sophie Sloan) does not have a normal childhood, for a couple of reasons. First, she’s currently being fostered by a loving couple. Second—and slightly more concerning—she has a monster living under her bed, something no one believes her about. It doesn’t take long for her foster parents to learn the truth, though, as they are promptly eaten by said monster. Now Aurora navigates the house on top of a pig statue, refusing to touch the floor out of fear she’ll be next.

Luckily for her, she has a very interesting neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen). She’s actually seen him kill a monster with her own eyes, so he seems like just the guy to help her. Turns out, he does kill monsters—just a different kind. He’s an assassin. And when Aurora approaches him with the job, he politely declines. But fate has other plans. Soon he comes face-to-face with the creature, and suddenly he’s fighting not only for Aurora’s life…but his own.

Written and directed by Fuller, Dust Bunny is a throwback to a time when Hollywood didn’t underestimate its audience. It blends genres with ease, evoking memories of the family-friendly-but-still-scary movies of the ’80s and early ’90s. Fuller creates a stylized world that would feel right at home in the John Wick universe. And it’s not just the visual style—there’s quite a bit of violence here, and the movie leans more heavily into horror than you might expect. Still, it keeps things light with a great sense of humor, giving this generation of kids their own Gremlins-style gateway horror movie.

Dust Bunny is a sharp, visually rich, almost fairy-tale-like film that is as sophisticated as it is sweet. It looks fantastic—cinematographer Nicole Hirsch Whitaker makes the world colorful, dreamlike, and just surreal enough. In a landscape where so many movies blend together, Dust Bunny stands out with its originality, especially in the realm of films the whole family can enjoy. Mikkelsen and Sloan are wonderful, and the supporting cast—including the great Sigourney Weaver—perfectly fills out Fuller’s world.

This is a world I was genuinely glad to visit. Fuller delivers a story about the difficulty of killing our monsters—and the even harder task of learning to live with them. It’s a lesson a lot of us could benefit from, told in one hell of an entertaining way.