When Bryan Fuller set out to make his first feature film, his goal was to make the kind of family-friendly scares that he loved as a kid. Think Gremlins or Ghostbusters. The creator of Hannibal and Pushing Daisies ended up crafting a story called Dust Bunny, about a young girl named Aurora who hires a hitman to kill the monster under her bed. It has all of the hallmarks of those films that inspired him— a sense of humor, playful action, and a creature that’s both lovable and creepy — but the final product also hit a slight snag.
“I was setting out to make a movie that people could take their kids to, and then — and this is probably why you shouldn’t have me watch your kids — we ended up with an R rating,” Fuller tells The Verge. “But it is intended as a family movie. It is intended for kids and adults alike.”
Dust Bunny started life as part of Amazing Stories, the Apple TV revival of Steven Spielberg’s anthology series. But the episode was eventually cut and Fuller quickly realized that with its self-contained story, it could be the perfect project for him to make the leap from TV to film. “It was very clear what to do with it,” he says.
Going back even further, Fuller explains that Dust Bunny’s origins began in his own childhood. The film follows a child desperate to find anyone to help her deal with the creature terrorizing her home; in this case, the monster under her bed appears to have eaten her parents, leaving her on her own. “The monster wasn’t necessarily under my bed, but it was under the roof,” Fuller says of growing up. “I had a tricky childhood and a violent father. He was a greater monster than anything I could’ve imagined. That informed certain aspects of the storytelling, in terms of Aurora’s survival and coping mechanisms.”
While Dust Bunny doesn’t feature any nudity or strong language, it earns its R rating through violence. It’s not heavy on blood and gore, but there are a number shoot-outs — including Sigourney Weaver wielding a pair of heels that double as guns and one particularly unsettling dismemberment sequence. Fuller views these moments as “cartoon violence,” though evidently the MPA disagreed.
One of the most important parts of the film was getting the casting right, as Dust Bunny hinges on the dynamic between the hitman and Aurora. Fuller knew that he wanted Hannibal collaborator Mads Mikkelsen as the adult lead, describing him as “a muse, a partner, a brother, a champion.” Mikkelsen was then brought into the casting process for his costar. “I wanted to make sure that he saw something,” Fuller adds, “because he’s in the scenes as an actor trying to bring things out of her that are tricks that he’s picked up having worked with child actors.” They ended up casting relative newcomer Sophie Sloan, and her youthful determination provides a fun counterpoint to Mikkelsen’s deadpan seriousness.
Image: Roadside Attractions
Also important was figuring out the design of the creature itself. Designed by artist Jon Wayshak, who previously worked with Fuller on an unreleased Pushing Daisies comic, the monster is a big fluffy thing that mostly stays out of sight early on, much like the shark in Jaws. Its design also had to manage a tricky balance. “It’s got to be scary and cute and have an allure to it,” says Fuller, “so you get that it could come from a child’s imagination.” For much of the film, it’s also unclear whether the creature is real at all, or if it’s all in Aurora’s head. (I won’t spoil it, but you do get an answer to this by the end.)
The buddy comedy setup and lovable-yet-creepy creature are all part of trying to capture that classic ’80s tone. Fuller notes Gremlins as perhaps the biggest inspiration on Dust Bunny, saying that, even when they had horror elements, many of the films he loved from that era also “had a levity to them and an accessibility that wasn’t oppressive in tone.”
So even with that pesky R rating, the writer and director are still holding out hope that Dust Bunny can reach its intended audience. “I would love for little girls to experience this,” he says. “…Obviously at their parents’ discretion.”
Dust Bunny is in theaters on December 12th.
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