Dust Bunny - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Bryan Fuller has always worn his influences on his sleeve. Dust Bunny, in its most reductive terms, feels like a version of The Professional, had it been directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, although the film is thoroughly Fuller’s own. The set design feels a bit inspired by Tim Burton, the art direction by Guillermo Del Toro, and so on and so on, but it never feels beholden to its influences. Dust Bunny is a unique creation where things go bump in the night and where next-door neighbors may just be legendary John Wick-esque assassins. And if you need to pay for that assassin’s services, it’s easy enough to swipe a collection plate from a massive church where the nuns sing and dance in an intricate, complicated number.

Aurora (Sophie Sloan) believes in monsters, and she believes that a monster has killed her parents. Not just that, but her foster parents. And yet another set of foster parents. One night, she follows her next-door neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen), who lives in the apartment across the hall in apartment 5B, and witnesses him killing a group of people. The way she sees it, though, during an ornate celebration in Chinatown, is that he slayed a dragon. So she “procures” his services (she has a Word of the Day calendar, so she knows big words) to slay the monster that’s been killing her parents.

The neighbor, who has no name beyond “Resident 5B,” believes her parents were killed because of him. They probably came looking for him, a known killer, and got the wrong people and killed a couple of innocents. He agrees to help Aurora in a way that satisfies them both. In her eyes, he’ll be slaying a monster for her. For him, he’ll be defending her against people he believes only went after her because of him.

Dust Bunny is at its best when it’s focused on its characters, those quiet moments between Aurora and Resident 5B when they’re agreeing to disagree about how they view this twisted world of theirs. Or whenever Sigourney Weaver is onscreen, in a scene-stealing performance, with such inspired lunacy I never thought Weaver capable of. Where the film begins to lose steam is on the mystery of whether or not monsters are real and inhabit the story. The mystery simply isn’t interesting enough to sustain the run time, and when the truth is finally revealed, it lands with a dull thud. Had the build-up been more interesting, the payoff probably would have felt more impactful.

The issue, I believe, is that at an hour and forty-five minutes, give or take, it feels bloated. Had the story been halved, it would have been able to run on pure momentum and never settled into those doldrums. Fuller is a natural in the television world, and Dust Bunny often feels like a pilot to an ongoing series, with this as our introduction, and a new evolution on that story week after week. It’s certainly not bad, but it’s saddled with some awkward pacing and a few reveals that aren’t nearly as clever as the film believes them to be.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K UHD Blu-ray
Dust Bunny hits 4K UHD Blu-ray in a single-disc release, housed in a standard case, with a code that can be used for digital redemption inside. The cover has stars Mikkelsen and Sloan together, in a sort of parody of buddy action pictures–appropriate for their dynamic in the film.

This is where I’m going to sound like an old man, lamenting this and that about modern filmmaking, but my real bone to pick is with how so many films are color graded these days. Dust Bunny is filled with wonderful, gorgeous, and colorful flourishes throughout, like an arrangement of flowers framing our characters in a dialogue sequence, but the colors are rendered into a muted, drab blur. That’s not to say Dust Bunny is an ugly picture. On the contrary, it’s quite striking, with excellent lighting, composition, and contrast, with excellent use of its Dolby Vision HDR grading on its 2160p video presentation, but it’s frustrating to see what could have been in its best moments. The sequence near the beginning, a tour through Chinatown, is an explosion of color, with neon and fireworks, bathed in a sea of deep, inky blacks. The apartment building in the early morning hours is awash in an amber glow of sunlight. But, then, so much of the film’s color palette looks like they toned the color down with a dial in a vain attempt at “naturalism”. This should have been a vibrant, kaleidoscopic feast for the senses, but alas…

Much like the video presentation, Dust Bunny comes equipped with a Dolby Atmos track that comes off as oddly subdued, and in its best moments, hints at what could have been. Atmospherics during the film’s quieter moments are relegated to the front end of the soundstage, with some effects making their way to the tops and the rears as they move locations. In a few wild, inspired pieces of action, the entirety of the soundscape is utilized, such as when a series of destructive effects ping the heights, the rears, and circle to and fro in a dizzying moment of madness. I understand the decision behind the front-heavy design, to make those wilder moments all the more wild and impactful, but it’s a shame to have those atmospherics and ambient effects not get the full immersion.

Dust Bunny may not pack a wealth of supplements into this disc, but there are a lot of fun (if extremely short) featurettes for you to make your way through, including an inside look into creature design and a behind-the-scenes look at the film's action choreography.

• Making Dust Bunny (HD 11:56)
• Monster Craft (HD 0:36)
• Q&A Sizzle (HD 0:43)
• Cute to Cutthroat (HD 0:26)
• Mads Choreography Video (HD 1:01)
• Cast Explainers (HD 0:32)
• Trailer

Dust Bunny isn’t quite successful, but not for a lack of trying. Writer/director Bryan Fuller utilizes every trick he has up his sleeve, but the resulting film often feels like it’s both too much and not enough. Too much is thrown at us, without regard to its success, and we feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of ideas, and then they just sit there, without much to do, as the film’s finale goes on autopilot as its action setpieces play out. The A/V stats are a bit restrained, no fault of the disc, frustrating extensions of a story that similarly hint at, but never quite reach, greatness. For everything, for all its inspired moments that do work, Dust Bunny is Recommended. 

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