Entertainment
The Most Original Monster Movie of the Last 10 Years Is Officially Your Next Best Late Night Watch
It is impossible not to immediately recognize Bryan Fuller’s whimsical aesthetic, which is what makes his feature film debut, Dust Bunny, one of the best monster movies of the past decade. Cutting his teeth in television, Fuller was responsible for creating such cult classics as Pushing Daisies and everyone’s favorite serial killer in Hannibal. He brings the same violence and wide-eyed wonder to Dust Bunny, starring Hannibal alum Mads Mikkelsen. The concept is simple enough.
10-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) manifests a monster under her bed from dust bunnies, and after it kills her foster parents, she enlists her neighborhood hitman to kill the creature. Of course, Fuller’s projects are rarely what they appear to be on the surface. Mikkelsen’s character, known only as “Intriguing Neighbor,” is morally gray and has his own childhood trauma to contend with. As it turns out, Dust Bunny is a metaphor, and that is what elevates it from a typical monster movie to an HBO Max must-watch.
The man who created Hannibal clearly has some emotionally traumatizing themes up his sleeve, no matter how cutsie Pushing Daisies or Wonderfalls was. The director digs into some tough territory as Aurora and the Intriguing Neighbor bond over childhood abandonment. The entire reason why Aurora wishes for a monster is that her birth parents weren’t kind to her. Since then, the dust bunny monster has consumed every family she’s had.
This connects to the Intriguing Neighbor’s own issues with parenthood, as he has an extremely toxic relationship with his own mother, Laverne, played eerily and villainously by Sigourney Weaver. Ultimately, Dust Bunny is about healing; it just happens to take place in a whimsical world. All the set decoration and props are exactly what fans have come to expect from Bryan Fuller. Bright colors and a fantastical world of magical realism exist in this alternate version of New York City.
It is almost a shame how much time is spent in Aurora’s apartment because of the magical nighttime sequence that occurs at the beginning of the story. Mads Mikkelsen can also always be trusted to pull off Fuller’s special brand of horrifying and charming, after his years on NBC’s Hannibal. The best part, of course, is the classic Lone Wolf and Cub dynamic that occurs between the Intriguing Stranger and Aurora. While he naturally harbors some disbelief that a monster under a child’s bed has actually been killing people, he still feels protective of Aurora. She represents the childhood he never got to have and the notion that hurt people hurt people.
He deduces that all the people who harmed Aurora are the ones who get devoured by the monster. She created it, so she has the power to control it. If that isn’t the perfect metaphor for childhood trauma, who knows what is? Just like trauma, the monster cannot be killed, only dealt with. This is the perfect lesson for people struggling with these complex themes. These characters carry the monster story home, uniting two people who need each other exactly at that moment. Dust Bunny was the dark horse of 2025 and was worth every second.
- Release Date
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December 11, 2025
- Runtime
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106 minutes
- Director
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Bryan Fuller
- Producers
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Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Jillian Share
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