Some movies understand that childhood fear is not cute just because it comes with a small protagonist. Monsters under the bed, strange neighbors, dead parents, and adults who absolutely do not believe you are all classic nightmare fuel, and this one piles them together with a surprisingly tender streak underneath the weirdness. It is dark, odd, stylish, and exactly the kind of movie that questions what treacherous snake came up with the lie that bedtime should be emotionally safe in the first place.
Dust Bunny is now streaming on HBO Max, bringing Bryan Fuller’s twisted family fantasy nightmare to a wider audience. The film follows a young girl named Aurora who believes that the monster under her bed killed her foster parents. She then hires her mysterious neighbor, a hitman played by **Mads Mikkelsen **(Casino Royale, Another Round), to protect her from the creature. It is a very normal child-care arrangement, assuming your babysitter options are “licensed professional” or “possibly lethal man next door.”
The cast includes Mikkelsen as Aurora’s hitman neighbor, Sophie Sloan as Aurora, Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Avatar) as Laverne, Sheila Atim (The Woman King, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) as Brenda, and David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Late Night With the Devil) as the superbly named Conspicuously Inconspicuous Man.
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
The movie grossed around $1 million at the worldwide box office, with no widely reported production budget currently available. It now holds an 86% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Elevated by Mads Mikkelsen and Sophie Sloan’s magnetic chemistry, **Dust Bunny is a dazzlingly imaginative **and stylish feature debut from director Bryan Fuller.”
Collider’s review stated that Dust Bunny was a strong and charming feature debut from Fuller, blending dark fairy-tale energy with a touching hitman-and-child dynamic. The review praises Fuller’s visual storytelling, noting that he pulls back on his usual dialogue-heavy instincts and lets mood, design, and character interaction do the work. It also highlights the bond between Mikkelsen and Sloan as the movie’s emotional center, with supporting turns from Weaver, Dastmalchian, and Atim adding extra flavor.
While familiar in places, Dust Bunny is described as a stylish, heartfelt oddity that could easily become a cult favorite. And sure enough, with the movie hitting all the right notes on streaming at the moment, it’s clear that Dust Bunny is haunting people in all the right way.
Dust Bunny is now streaming on HBO Max.
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Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Jillian Share