Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny Is Weird, Wonderful, and Utterly Clear on One Thing: Believe Children

Horror has two speeds right now: go-for-the-throat splatter (thanks, Terrifier) and... not much for the kids who like to be scared but still sleep with a night-light. Bryan Fuller just walked in with a middle path. His feature debut, Dust Bunny, taps that old-school, under-the-covers shiver and somehow feels like a hug and a therapy session at the same time.

The hook is simple and perfect

A little girl hires a hitman to deal with the monster under her bed. That hitman? Mads Mikkelsen. Yes, the guy who played Hannibal for Fuller on NBC. Even if you never watched that show, the visual sells itself: a stone-faced, low-voiced giant sitting across a kitchen table from an eight-year-old named Aurora. He goes by Resident 5B here, nothing more. She is small and stubborn; he is skeptical and unmoved. That friction is the engine.

Kid-scary, VHS-on-a-road-trip energy

Dust Bunny looks like the kind of movie you would have worn out on a portable VHS player in the backseat. There is a creaky, fantastical Victorian apartment building where Aurora and Resident 5B live. There is a pop-bright dim sum restaurant that splashes color all over the screen. And when the dust bunny shows up, it comes right out of the floor and eats people, leaving clumpy, nasty traces behind. It is playful and gross, which is basically the point.

Underneath the candy shell, it aches. Aurora is alone. So is the hitman. The movie knows that is the real story, and it leans into the healing. At one point Sigourney Weaver shows up, seemingly as Resident 5B's boss, and flat-out tells him that rescuing this kid is not going to fix his own childhood damage. That line lands.

Fuller is aiming for your gut, not just your nerves

He keeps Aurora's backstory intentionally thin so you can project your own. After a screening, a young woman told him the way she read Aurora's past was healing for her personally. Fuller gets it because he grew up in a rough house with a violent father; the monster was not under his bed, it was down the hall. The movie plays like a fairy-tale lesson about how we patch ourselves up and stop carrying blame for what other people did.

The classics are in the DNA

This is that time-tested setup where a kid sees the danger and the adults either shrug or show up late. Think Stephen King. Think the early Spielberg run, which Fuller openly channels. And yes, Spielberg actually gave him notes on the script. The bond between Aurora and her monster is almost an inverted E.T.: familiar in shape, different in effect. Like E.T., it also pokes at that ache of wonder that never fully resolves. You can almost hear Fuller wondering what Elliot grew up into after the glow faded.

"If there is a message in this movie, it is to believe children."

Who is who, and what sticks

• Bryan Fuller, the cult TV mind behind Hannibal, makes his feature film debut and goes softer and stranger than the current gore race.
• Mads Mikkelsen plays the nameless Resident 5B, a towering, gravel-voiced hitman hired by eight-year-old Aurora to kill her bedroom monster.
• Aurora is our hero, drawn deliberately enigmatic so audiences can read themselves into her.
• Sigourney Weaver turns up as what sure looks like Resident 5B's handler, delivering a tough truth about inner-child wounds.
• David Dastmalchian sports a mustache and steals a big laugh right when the tension needs a release.
• Standout imagery: a decaying, storybook Victorian apartment; a neon-tinged dim sum spot; and a dust bunny that literally feasts, leaving icky evidence.
• Core theme: the world ignores kids until it is almost too late. Fuller leans into it and sticks the landing.

Long story short: this is the kind of spooky that makes you want to plug in a night-light, not throw up your dinner. It is also gentler and more thoughtful than the premise suggests. Dust Bunny is in theaters now.