In 'Dust Bunny,' a girl hires an assassin to take out her bedroom terrors

TV fable Bryan Fuller, known for his cult classics “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal,” conscionable earned an Independent Spirit Award information for archetypal feature. It’s someway a astonishment that the well-known creator conscionable directed his archetypal movie, aft spending astir 3 decades moving successful tv connected bid similar “Dead Like Me” and “American Gods.” Now helium turns to the satellite of indie film, reuniting with histrion Mads Mikkelsen, his Hannibal Lecter, connected the acheronian fairy communicative “Dust Bunny.”

Fuller has a happening for idioms, extending them to their astir utmost ends (e.g., “pushing daisies”), and truthful successful “Dust Bunny,” helium imagines what those bits of fluff could beryllium if our nightmares came to life. He besides posits an outlandish notion: What if a kid hired an assassin to termination the monster nether her bed?

Aurora (Sophie Sloan) is an imaginative young miss who hears things that roar and shriek successful the night. The particulate bunny nether her furniture is simply a ravenous, monstrous thing. When her parents spell missing, she’s convinced they’ve been eaten by the monster bunny, and seeks retired the services of an “intriguing neighbor” (Mikkelsen, that’s however he’s credited) whom she has seen vanquishing dragons successful the alley outside. With a interest that she purloins from a religion postulation plate, she implores him for assistance and helium agrees, arsenic helium learns much astir this young girl’s challenging childhood.

At first, “Dust Bunny” feels a small light, the communicative skittering crossed its densely designed surface, with precise small dialog successful the archetypal half. But it grows and grows, much bits and pieces accumulating arsenic Fuller reveals this strange, heightened world. We conscionable Intriguing Neighbor’s handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver), revealing the larger Wickian satellite of killers that helium inhabits.Weaver chomps done her scenes similar the monster bunny chomps done the floorboards — literally, arsenic she consumes charcuterie, dumplings and “suckling pig beverage sandwiches” with gusto. Some monsters grin astatine america from crossed the table.

The movie is fundamentally “Leon: The Professional” meets “Amélie” (one of Fuller’s favourite films), but with his chiseled wit and flair. That benignant besides means that “Dust Bunny” is rather fussy and mannered and if you don’t bargain successful connected the film’s arch wit and stylized world, you’re liable to bounce close disconnected of it. As Fuller opens the satellite up, revealing a sly FBI cause (Sheila Atim) and much baddies (David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson), the crippled becomes much intriguing beyond its unwieldy childhood-trauma metaphor, but there’s besides not rather capable embroidered connected this tapestry. It feels shallow, not fleshed out.

Fuller demonstrates a beardown bid implicit his ocular domain but the pat allegory helium presents astir the monsters with whom we person to larn to unrecorded feels a spot muddled. Sloan and Mikkelsen are terrific together, but you consciousness that determination is overmuch much they could person sunk their teeth into here, and possibly the limits of the communicative uncover the limits of the budget, cautiously wallpapered implicit with opulent accumulation plan — explosions of patterns and colour crafted by Jeremy Reed, captured with shadowy but lush cinematography by Nicole Hirsch Whitaker.

It’s a archetypal diagnostic that feels similar 1 — a spot of a astonishment from idiosyncratic truthful experienced. But the task has Fuller’s signature style, adjacent if it doesn’t adhd up to overmuch much than a neat kiddie-centric hard-R genre exercise.

Katie Walsh is simply a Tribune News Service movie critic.