Dust Bunny: A Messy Mishmash of Monsters & Assassins (4K)

The Film:

Writer Bryan Fuller has made quite an impressive career for himself working on such beloved & critically-acclaimed shows as "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," "Star Trek: Voyager," Pushing Daisies," "Heroes," and "Hannibal," with some of these projects earning him prestigious nominations from the Television Academy & The Writers Guild of America. Now, after nearly 30 years of working in television, he has decided to make the leap to movies with "Dust Bunny," a film he not only wrote, but which also marks his feature directorial debut. Will he find the same level of success that he has in TV, or will he merely discover that writing films is a different monster altogether?

The film begins by introducing us to eight-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan), who lives in New York City with her parents. She also happens to be terrorized by a monster that's living under the floor in her bedroom, or at least something that she believes to be a monster. One night, she happens to notice a neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) of hers and decides to follow him to Chinatown, where she believes that she witnesses him killing a dragon (though this is actually several gang members in a costume).

After trying to warn her parents about the monster, Aurora hears them being attacked and wakes up to find them gone, concluding that they've been eaten. This leads her to attempt to hire her neighbor to kill the monster, though the nameless neighbor finds it hard to accept her story, believing that her parents were likely killed by assassins trying to find him. However, as he soon finds out, it just might be possible that Aurora's wild tale is true.

"Dust Bunny" is quite the bizarre little outing, one that wants to be part children's fairy tale and part hitman drama, two things that you wouldn't ever really dream of seeing anywhere near each other. With such an unusual combination, Fuller has already given himself quite the difficult challenge of trying to blend the two disparate genres into a compelling tale that'll have viewers caring about what happens to this little girl & her new friend. However, as we soon find out, perhaps that should've been the first sign that this was not a particularly great mix to attempt, for in his effort to give us "Leon" with a touch of fantasy, things don't go quite as planned from quite early on.

For starters, it takes quite a long time for Fuller to get his story moving, to the point where it almost feels as though he's delaying on purpose. We know there's a supposed monster under Aurora's floor, and we know she wants to hire her neighbor to kill it, so as to why he chooses to dilly-dally so much is anyone's guess. However, even when he does decide to kick it in gear, he tries to do so by throwing in the hitman subplot that has people trying to kill the neighbor, which merely leads to a messy mishmash of monsters & assassins that culminates in a highly-repetitive third-act shootout that goes on for far too long.

It's a shame because the interesting premise was there, it just appears that Fuller didn't know how to develop it effectively, leading to a slow, cluttered, and confused film that isn't really sure what it wants to be. As mentioned, he clearly wanted to do something along the lines of "Leon" with a fantasy twist, which does indeed sound like it could be a pretty interesting idea, but in the end, he was sadly unable to crack the idea sufficiently enough to make it work on the screen, leaving us with an intriguing experiment whose potential is ultimately left unrealized.

Video/Audio:

"Dust Bunny" comes to 4K in a 3.00:1, 2160p Ultra High Definition transfer of excellent quality, featuring a perfectly crisp & clear picture throughout the entire 106-minute duration, even during the darkest of scenes. Likewise, the Dolby Atmos audio track is marvelous, giving you all of the dialogue, sound effects, and music in outstanding quality. Overall, Lionsgate has done a wonderful job in both areas for the film's 4K debut.

Special Features:

Making Dust Bunny (12 Minutes): Writer/director Bryan Fuller & the cast take you behind the scenes of the making of the film.

Monster Craft (36 Seconds): An extremely brief description of how the film's monster came to be.

Q&A Sizzle (43 Seconds): Very quick sound bites from Fuller & Mikkelsen about the film.

Cute to Cutthroat (26 Seconds): More quick sound bites about the film's monster.

Mads Choreography Video (1 Minute): Mads Mikkelsen describes and demonstrates his fight choreography with figures.

Cast Explainers (32 Seconds): Even more quick sound bites about the film.

Conclusion:

"Dust Bunny" presents an intriguing premise that attempts to be part children's fairy tale & part hitman drama (think "Leon" with a twist of fantasy), but sadly writer/director Bryan Fuller didn't really know how to develop the idea effectively, leading to a slow, messy mishmash of monsters & assassins that ultimately comes off as a confused film that isn't quite sure what it wants to be.

Score: 2.5/5

Available on 4K starting tomorrow.

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