Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny: A Macabre Fairy Tale with Mikkelsen on Monster Duty

Dust Bunny

Ten-year-old Aurora asks a hit man to kill the monster she believes ate her entire family. To protect her, he’ll need to battle an onslaught of assassins while accepting the fact that some monsters are real.

Release date: 12 December 2025 (USA)

Director: Bryan Fuller

Mads Mikkelsen is hunting a monster. Of course he is. But the real story here isn’t the premise, kid hires grim neighbour to kill the thing under her bed, it’s the utterly distinct, cobweb-and-candy world that Bryan Fuller has somehow conjured for his first feature film. Fuller, the mind behind TV’s Hannibal and Pushing Daisies, series so visually and tonally specific you could spot a frame from them in a crowded room. He’s always traded in a kind of gorgeous grotesquerie. So a jump to the big screen for a dark fairy tale? Makes perfect sense.

And what a leap. Dust Bunny feels less like a debut and more like a master flexing a muscle he’s had all along. Guillermo del Toro’s gothic heart meets Wes Anderson’s fastidious, saturated whimsy. That’s the vibe. It’s all there in the review—the ballet of shadows, the bold costumes, that Wednesday Addams meets Matilda energy from the terrifyingly good young star Sophie Sloan. She and Mikkelsen are a pairing you never knew you needed. Adorably gruff, hilariously deadpan.

Sigourney Weaver, though. She’s apparently having the time of her life. A total joyride of a performance, all smiles and murder. You get the sense the whole cast is in on the joke, this beautifully designed, macabre joke.

It’s a clever script, too. Not just a vehicle for visual splendor. Edged with something real, a vulnerability that pokes through the elaborate patterns and the horror. Fuller’s never been one for simple metaphors, and he doesn’t start now. The film revels in its own sense of wonder. A macabre delight, indeed. Tough to believe it’s his first time behind the camera for a movie. Feels like he’s been building to this his whole career.

Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny: A Macabre Fairy Tale with Mikkelsen on Monster Duty

A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden

Dust Bunny is a macabre delight.

Imagine Guillermo del Toro meets Wes Anderson. Equal parts fanciful and gruesome, the film tells the tale of a precocious youth named Aurora (Sophie Sloan), who hires the neighbor in 5B (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster that lives under her bed.

What a wonderful premise, and writer/director Bryan Fuller wastes not a frame of his feature film debut. The saturated colors and intricate patterns and textures of the set design, the ballet of horror that is his shadow imagery, the boldly whimsical costuming—all of it conjuring an amplified fairy tale. It’s tough to believe this remarkably confident feature is his first foray behind the camera.

Fuller’s casting is just as playful. Sloan delivers Roald Dahl’s Matilda by way of Wednesday Addams, braids and all. Mikkelsen’s adorably gruff, and watching his character mentally work through the mystery surrounding Aurora’s missing parents (eaten, he’s told) is fascinating. He and Sloan share a wonderful chemistry, never cloying for a second, and often darkly hilarious. Their banter is often priceless, Sloan landing lines with impeccably droll comic timing.

Speaking of hilarious, the great Sigourney Weaver is having a blast playing gleefully against type and shoplifting every second of screentime. All smiles, genuine joy, and murder, her character enjoys the pleasures life affords and accepts, with a smile, the reality of each situation. Again, usually murder.

Likewise, David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, with big support from an inspired costume designer, deliver entertaining weirdness.

Fuller’s premise could have taken many directions. It’s the sense of wonder Dust Bunny articulates that mesmerizes. But the writing doesn’t serve only to carry the visual splendor. It’s a clever script, edged with pathos and vulnerability, hinting at metaphor without ever submitting to it.

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