File this one under “Be careful what you wish for ... you might get it.”
Writer/director Bryan Fuller developed a reputation in the early 21st century for creating adorably quirky television shows such as Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and — most particularly — Pushing Daisies. He then got more serious last decade, putting his spin on television adaptations of established properties such as Hannibal, American Gods and Star Trek: Discovery.
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| The restaurant setting may be attractively benign, but the barely veiled conversation that flows between Aurora (Sophie Sloan, left), 5b (Mads Mikkelsen) and Laverne (Sigourney Weaver) is anything but. |
Frankly, the result is a mess: a failed effort to re-invent 1994’s Leon: The Professional as an absurdist fantasy.
The film begins late at night, as a tiny swirling dust mote grows larger by bumping into other dust chunks, gradually assembling itself into a small, rabbit-shaped dust bunny that scuttles beneath the bed of 8-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan). She lives in a fifth-floor New York City apartment with her parents (Line Kruse and Caspar Phillipson).
The dust bunny growls at a volume far beyond its tiny size, prompting Aurora to shriek in terror, waking her parents. She insists there’s a monster under her bed; they naturally don’t believe her.
(“Grown-ups pretend not to be afraid,” she later comments, “but they are, all the time.”)
Aurora clearly is an imaginative child, sharing her bed with all manner of stuffed critters, in a bedroom that production designer Jeremy Reed clearly enjoyed filling with all manner of not-quite-right accessories: dolls with the heads of animals, clocks that don’t show the time, and other mildly disorienting touches.
Cinematographer Nicole Hirsch Whitaker amplifies the sense of unreality with all manner of cockeyed, vertigo-inducing camera angles, some shifting in mid-scene.
Still frightened, Aurora climbs out her bedroom window and onto the fire escape. A fluttering firefly calls her attention to the neighbor in 5B (Mads Mikkelsen). She follows when he leaves his apartment, and — wide-eyed — watches as he kills a dragon ... actually killing the members of an armed gang in a dragon dance parade puppet.
The following morning, a still-terrified Aurora warns her parents to “stay off the floor.” They ignore her, and — as Aurora listens, from her bed, to the sounds on the other side of the closed door — they’re devoured. By something huge.
Given the surreal manner with which Fuller and Whitaker staged 5B’s earlier nighttime activity — and that’s the only name he’s given — we wonder if Aurora believes that he killed an actual dragon. If so, this explains why she hires him to kill her monster.
There are no monsters, he repeatedly insists, just people who behave like monsters.
He should know; he’s a professional assassin. A bit later, he reports a successful night’s work to his handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver). She’s annoyed by the fact that his job was witnessed by Aurora, and advises him to kill her. Clearly offended, he refuses.
Mikkelsen is marvelous in the midst of all this absurdity, granting 5B with a world-weary blend of baffled resignation, calm resolve and morbidly dry humor, along with formidable physical skills; he’s not somebody to be messed with. Wide-eyed Sloan is adorable as the preternaturally wise Aurora, insisting on a version of “reality” that eventually turns out to be accurate.
Weaver initially seems maternal and condescending, mouthing insincere platitudes ... but it soon becomes clear that if there’s a truly evil person in this story, it’s Laverne.
That evening, two killers (Roland Szóka and Nóra Trokán) invade the building, heading for Aurora’s apartment. Sensing their arrival, 5B assumes they’re after him, having gotten the wrong apartment. He jumps into what becomes weirdly chaotic action, ultimately killing the man; the woman is devoured by the unseen monster.
Still frazzled by what just occurred, Brenda and 5B are startled further by the sudden appearance of Brenda (Sheila Atim, oddly sinister), who identifies herself as the child services protection agent assigned to Aurora. 5B blinks in confusion — so quickly? — but then learns that the girl’s birth parents and (now) three sets of foster parents have disappeared.
5B absorbs this, while dismembering the male assassin in Aurora’s bathroom. While she watches, and as they have an oddly tangential conversation.
Which probably is the threshold that sane viewers will be unwilling to cross. A little girl, participating in the mutilation of a human body?
No thanks.
With nobody else to look after her, 5B brings Aurora along, when he again meets with a clearly vexed Laverne. The conversation doesn’t go well; after departing, they pick up a tail — David Dastmalchian, as the “Conspicuously Inconspicuous Man” — who warns that he and his crew intend to eliminate 5B.
The final act is a dog-nuts melee involving 5B, Aurora, half a dozen assassins, an equal number of pursuing FBI agents, Laverne and (at long last) the dust bunny, revealed in its impressively gargantuan nastiness. Credit where due, Fuller and stunt coordinator Levente Lezsák choreograph this mayhem quite inventively, at times making a ballet of the opposing forces.
Even the apartment setting amplifies the chaos, as if the primary hallway corridor is alive: bending and breathing with the action, each time the dust bunny erupts from the floorboards.
But when the dust settles (forgive me), too many questions abound.
Four sets of parents? Why? Aurora shows no signs of having been abused. And if the situation has persisted for so long, why does she spend the initial half-hour behaving as if it’s happening for the first time? Since 5B and the various victims hear the dust bunny’s roars and body-shredding gnashing of teeth, are we to imagine that nobody else has noticed and complained?
All this is bad enough, but the denouement — and final revelation — are ridiculous.
If you do persist to the bitter end, don’t miss the mid-credits cut-scene, which brings reasonable closure for at least one character.
Even so, I can’t imagine being satisfied with this monstrosity.
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