Dust Bunny (2025) review

Terrified of a monster she believes lives under her bed and devoured her third foster family, Aurora (Sophie Sloan) contacts her nameless neighbor in apartment 5B (Mads Mikkelsen) and asks him to kill it, which he reluctantly agrees to even though he's not sure she's telling the truth.  Director Fuller, in his feature directorial debut, has gathered a cult following based on his work in television (he made shows such as Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies and Hannibal) and this certainly has a distinctive visual approach, with the clever props (Aurora "rides" a metallic hippo around so as not to touch the floor) and oddly colored sets, but after a dazzling opening act it loses a ton of energy and becomes mundane, with too many pointless conversations involving Mads' "handler" Laverne (Sigourney Weaver) and the Feds.  It doesn't make much sense as an "examination" of childhood trauma: the beastly bunny comes to life as a result of Aurora "wishing" for it ... but the movie doesn't try to probe her psyche (Fuller's too busy getting fancy with his cameras) and she doesn't seem to be a bad kid who wants to harm herself or others.