Dust Bunny
Director: Bryan Fuller
Writer: Bryan Fuller
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Sophie Sloan, Sheila Atim, David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson, Sigourney Weaver
Seen on: 28.2.2026

Plot:
8 year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) knows that there is a monster under her bed. And she fears for her parents‘ life, especially since they don’t believe her. When they get eaten, she turns to her neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen). She has seen him kill a dragon after all, so he should be up for dealing with a monster.

Dust Bunny was a very entertaining, stylish and simply fun film that gave me pretty much everything I had hoped for from Fuller’s directorial debut.

I have been a fan of Fuller’s TV shows for a while, always loving his fanciful ideas and sense of style combined with very solid character work. It is one of the great tragedies in TV that most of his shows ended too soon. So, I was excited to get a movie from him that necessarily needs to be more contained than a TV show. Here, too, though, Fuller’s work seems to have some bad luck with the cinematic release, at least here in Austria. At first set to start in January, the film was pushed back until February, and on the second weekend after its release – when I could watch it – it had already virtually disappeared from cinemas except for a handful of screenings. I felt that we all, and Fuller, were short-changed by that.

Especially considering that the film is really good. I will admit that it takes a little while to get going, but Fuller’s passion for rich, opulent set pieces and visuals translates really well to the big screen and fits a story that is somewhere between reality and fantasy, adult and child perspectives perfectly.

The film plays with the narrative framing a lot. At the beginning it seems like it might go the way off playing the fantastic elements as literally Aurora’s fantasies, but I am happy to report that we get a real treat of a monster in the course of the film. And there is a sweet, thoughtful message underneath the playful horror, the comedy with a bite, one about having to face the consequences of your actions and living with them, even if they were unintended. Plus, one about the beauty of found families.

Mikkelsen is great, as is Sophie Sloan, but it is Sigourney Weaver who really steals the show here whenever she appears. It is nice to see her be funny, and with so much gusto, too. It is also thanks to her that Dust Bunny is a really memorable experience.

Summarizing: definitely fun!