Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic. This film was made available to me in advance, but it lacked the audio description track it will have in theaters. One seems to exist. On top of that, I seem to have lost the I button on my keyboard, so typing is super fun since we never use that letter ever.

I had this casually recommended to me by some fellow critics who had already seen it, and they were impressed with the lead performance by Sophia Sloan. She does a wonderful job, and as a youth performer, she really is worth noting. Hopefully she and a few other new faces get more work in the future. In Dust Bunny, she plays Aurora, a young girl who is afraid of the monster under her bed, which may or not be real. She tries telling her story to her mysterious neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) who as it turns out may know a bit about monsters. He’s an accomplished hitman, and when Aurora says her parents were killed by a monster, he assumes it was a botched hit on him. He decides to help Aurora with her problem, but for very different reasons. his boss (Sigourney Weaver) reminds him the girl can’t live. She’s seen his face. But Aurora lives in a world where a monster eats anyone on the floor, swallowing them whole, including their screams.

I had to put myself in the mindset of what if someone had bothered enough to get me an accessible screener, because this film is 100% up my alley. It might still be in contention for some awards, for the film, or for Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies), who I didn’t even realize hadn’t directed a feature until now. There’s a lot of promise in his choices, the direction of the narrative, and the performances. But, it is all a guessing game, since the film centers around a monster that may or may not be real. There were plenty of moments, where if I wasn’t sure this film had audio description for everyone else, I would have dropped a rotten score. It would have sucked, but I frequently run into the problem of wanting to see something that has no accessibility.

My final grade is generous, based on the hope I have for what the film could be. Fuller seems to have crafted a new, fresh hitman/child movie, which tramples much of what came before it. Not Leon, because that movie is perfect, but basically everything else. Fuller proves he could be an exciting new filmmaker, and one who should be on more debut feature lists.

Dust Bunny creatively plays with the idea of a monster, colliding a more realistic take with a fantastical one, for a total blast and a great time at the cinema.

Fresh: Final Grade: 8.0/10

Now I have to find my key. This review was maddening, but it opens tomorrow.