Children are often afraid of what’s under the bed, though in most cases there’s nothing to worry about and it’s all in their imagination. But what if that wasn’t the case, and there was a monster lying in wait to eat anything foolish enough to touch the floor? For his first feature film, Bryan Fuller creates such a world, where one girl knows what she’s seen and is desperate to get one man to believe her and do what she knows he’s uniquely qualified to do: kill the monster living under her bed.
Aurora (Sophie Sloan) is very scared of what’s under her bed, and she has good reason to be. A small ball of dust wafts into her room and slowly picks up more dust, eventually becoming a dust bunny with a distinctly terrifying look. She warns her foster parents to stay off the floor to no avail, and it eats them. She has a solution for how to fix this, and she’s been following the hit man (Mads Mikkelsen) who lives next door so that she can hire him to kill the monster. While he doesn’t believe that it’s a monster who did the killing, he realizes that he was likely the target and the assassins got the wrong apartment, so he decides he has to help his neighbor, who won’t stop telling him that, whatever he does, he has to stay off the floor.
This film, which makes its world premiere in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival, marks the first movie from Bryan Fuller, who has extensive experience in television. In this, there are hints of style and fanciful storytelling from Pushing Daisies, a tendency towards brutal violence from Hannibal, and a very casual relationship with death from Dead Like Me. It does lean more towards horror than any of those projects, though it’s relatively family-friendly, if parents want their children watching violent fare that might give them legitimate nightmares for a long time. Fuller’s primary drive, as always, is to indulge and believe fully. If this girl says there’s a monster under her bed, it doesn’t matter if anyone tells her it’s not real, because to her, and therefore audiences, it is.
There is a great deal of humor infused into this film. The hit man’s reaction to what Aurora tells him involves a great banter, and Aurora corrects him repeatedly on how to pronounce her name, which he insists he’s saying the same way she is. Each of the dust bunny’s kills are played for laughs too, and this is meant to be an entertaining film. It’s great to see Mikkelsen, typically a dramatic actor who reunites with Fuller after playing the title character in Hannibal, in a film like this that makes a mockery of his menacing looks and typical roles and gives him a great deal of physical comedy to do. Sloan, in her first feature film role, truly sells the part and shows superb comedic timing and expressivity that makes her scenes with Mikkelsen especially fun. Sigourney Weaver is a delightfully devilish scenery-chewing standout from a supporting cast that also includes David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson, and Sheila Atim.
Fuller makes a bold choice to feature almost no dialogue for the first third or so of this film, allowing its events to play out as Aurora watches with a combination of horror and knowing. As the film continues, there’s much more conversation and just as much action in preparation for a lengthy and memorable showdown in the third act. Fuller proves to be extremely skilled at navigating and blending a rollercoaster of genres, incorporating multiples tones and approaches in his broad cinematic debut. It’s equally irreverent, fantastical, and maniacal, sure to please and enthrall audiences who seek out midnight entries at film festivals. For the rest of Fuller’s fanbase, this film is definitely something different, perfectly expected in some ways and an obvious realization of the kind of fare he’s always wanted to make in something that’s much briefer in form but just as wildly creative and peculiar as he has always shown himself to be.
Movie Rating: 6/10
