After a long time of making masterful tv with Pushing Daisies, Useless Like Me, and the ceaselessly yearned-for Hannibal, it was solely a matter of time earlier than Bryan Fuller took his concepts from the TV display screen to the silver display screen. Fuller’s earlier work is prestigious for a cause: He’s in a position to delight and horrify his viewers in equal measure, typically by shining a lightweight on our wishes and fears, warping them into one thing fantastical that also feels too shut for consolation. So it’s no shock that his characteristic directorial debut, Mud Bunny, efficiently channels that very same sentiment with the glee of Hannibal Lecter feeding a person his personal leg.
The story begins in a New York Metropolis house constructing, the place 8-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) hires her murderer neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen in a much-hyped Hannibal reunion) to kill the monster residing beneath her mattress. As anticipated, the hitman (labeled “Intriguing Neighbor” within the credit) isn’t too enthused by the project, and doesn’t consider Aurora’s tall tales. He has larger issues of his personal to cope with: his job has put a giant goal on his again.
Picture: Roadside Sights
The conflict of the mundane and the improbable is what Fuller does greatest — and similar to in Pushing Daisies and Hannibal, he makes that dissonance really feel fashionable right here. Watching Mikkelsen stroll down a unclean alleyway with blue, purple, and inexperienced fireworks lighting up the sky like a mosaic, or an murderer concealing himself throughout the flowery gray wallpaper of Aurora’s house, Fuller’s followers will see his fingerprints etched in all places. The largest inform is the meals. Hannibal followers know Fuller likes to make meals appear like artwork — earlier than underscoring it with one thing disturbing. He does so once more in Mud Bunny. At one level, Mikkelsen’s murderer and Aurora dig right into a rabbit-shaped dumpling with eyes product of seaweed. Nonetheless, when the hitman bites into it, it wriggles as if it’s alive. In one other scene, Mikkelsen is obtainable a sandwich that appears like an strange sandwich, however from one other angle, it resembles ribbons of flesh curled collectively. It’s a blink-and-miss-it second, nevertheless it’s so visually distinct you’ll have it seared onto the again of your eyelids all the identical. Fuller has mentioned that his aim was to make a “kids’s film that folks would take pleasure in watching with their children.” It’s a disgrace, then, that this film acquired an R score — a classification that feels unwarranted, contemplating the shortage of blood, profanity, and gore. Mud Bunny feels precisely like a horror fairy story ripped straight from a Brothers Grimm e book.
Picture: Roadside Sights
Even the characters’ names replicate these fairy-tale components. Aurora shares the identify of the protagonist in Disney’s 1959 movie Sleeping Magnificence, and a lot of the different characters have signifiers somewhat than names. For instance, David Dastmalchian’s and Rebecca Henderson’s characters are identified solely as Conspiciously Inconspicious Man and Intimidating Lady. By Aurora’s eyes, we see these characters as caricatures somewhat than folks. This broadness makes them really feel foreboding and ominous, revealing how Aurora sees the grownup world’s tangible however barely understood threats. Nonetheless, they’re nonetheless much less threatening than the terrifying monster beneath her mattress. However whereas Mud Bunny scales down the gore and guts one would possibly anticipate from Fuller, who used a lot faux blood on Hannibal that mould began to develop on the set, Fuller hasn’t softened his razor-sharp edges, both. He likes to twist viewers expectations, and whereas his script very a lot leans into child horror, Mud Bunny makes an extremely mundane factor — a literal mud bunny beneath Aurora’s mattress — really feel like a loaded gun. However the greatest subversion comes from the connection between Mikkelsen’s hitman and Aurora. Mikkelsen is well-known for taking part in villains, together with Hannibal Lecter in Fuller’s Hannibal sequence. However the place his Lecter is a calculating predator whose perception within the great and the insane leads him to locations no particular person would go with no gun, Mud Bunny’s hitman is a special beast. He’s gruff and deadly, however with a mushy, quirky facet. He defines himself as a monster, however Aurora displays his personal childlike fears and innocence. There’s a loneliness to him, a way of neglect, that at instances makes it appear to be precocious, no-nonsense Aurora is the father or mother of their relationship. It’s the correct quantity of candy and discomforting.
Picture: Roadside Sights
Mud Bunny might not fully scratch the unhinged itch that Fuller’s earlier kaleidoscope of horror and comedy tasks gave, largely as a result of it’s a lot extra kid-friendly. Regardless of the R score, Fuller’s imaginative and prescient for Mud Bunny is for youths who really feel just like the outsider. Mud Bunny speaks to your inside little one, whereas additionally being a not-so-gentle reminder that your fears are solely as sturdy as you make them out to be. It’s a visually and thematically distinct horror fairytale, and one which followers of Fuller will love.
Mud Bunny debuted in theaters on Dec. 12.
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