TIFF Midnight Madness has long been one of the most popular programs of any film festival, a launching pad for new talent as well as a pedestal for accomplished genre directors. Where else could you see both the Best Picture nominated “The Substance” and this year’s “F*ck My Son!”? The breakout of 2025’s MM section was undeniably Curry Barker’s “Obsession,” which sold to Focus shortly after its premiere for a stunning $15 million. But there were at least three other films in the program that had people talking outside of the Royal Alexandra, where raucous audiences celebrate left-of-center cinema that can only premiere after midnight.
My favorite of these three is the feature debut of TV legend Bryan Fuller, who brings the craft that fans of shows like “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal” to his playfully twisted “Dust Bunny,” a movie inspired by Roald Dahl, Jim Henson, and Jeunet & Caro in equal measure. Some questionable CGI aside, this is one of those films that trusts kids to handle honestly scary themes in how it twists the classic tale of “the monster under the bed” to something that should ring true for all generations. It really reminds me of a better time for family entertainment, a time in which people like Joe Dante and Jim Henson were allowed to legitimately frighten kids. Those are the movies that create future filmmakers, one who are inspired by works like “Gremlins” or “Labyrinth” to make their own fantastical adventures. Let’s hope it reaches them when it hits theaters this December.
In a gloriously dialogue-free prologue of sorts, we meet Aurora (Sophie Sloan), a girl with a monster under her bed. Her foster parents don’t believe her. Neither did the foster parents before them, the ones eaten by said dust bunny from Hell. After the new ones get gobbled up like carrots, Aurora goes to a neighbor in her apartment building—a wonderfully designed setting that exists somewhere between fantasy and reality a la J&C works like “Delicatessen” and “City of Lost Children.” The neighbor happens to be a hit man, and he happens to be played by Fuller’s Lecter, the singular Mads Mikkelsen. At first, he tries to talk Aurora out of her reality, convinced that whoever killed her foster parents were really after him or his handler (played by Sigourney Weaver). The monster could just be how a little girl interprets actual human-based violence. But what if it’s not?
Fuller is having a blast with “Dust Bunny,” never overplaying his themes, choosing to make pure entertainment, first and foremost. And it’s certainly that. Mikkelsen is his wonderfully deadpan self, balanced out by entertaining performances from the striking David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, who end up sucked into Aurora’s inexplicable predicament. Some of the monster CGI is questionable—there are some obvious puppet shots, and one wishes the whole thing was animatronic instead—but this is a movie that really builds momentum as you get on its playful, timeless wavelength. It’s a fairy tale for kids who know fairies are monsters too.
One of the most buzzed films of TIFF 2025 from any program was Kenji Tanigaki’s “The Furious,” a truly bonkers showcase of incredible stunt and fight choreography that drew comparisons to “The Raid” and “Night Comes for Us.” The dialogue is atrocious, the plotting is goofy, and no one will care because Tanigaki has conceived, choreographed, and executed some of the most impressive fight scenes in years. Employing the expertise of veterans from some of your favorite Asian action movies of all time, “The Furious” should be an action hit for the studio smart enough to release it. Someone should get on that fast.
“The Furious” is about two men who essentially take down a massive trafficking ring that they’re drawn into for personal reasons. The mute Wang Wei’s (Miao Xie) daughter is kidnapped by the cartel around the same time that Navin’s (Joe Taslim) journalist wife goes missing while investigating them. They become a dynamic duo of carnage in this “Taken Meets the Raid,” punching, kicking, stabbing, and slicing their way through waves of bad guys to a remarkably bloody climax. Familiar genre faces like Yayan Ruhian (“John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum”) and Brian Le (a stunt performer in everything from “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to “Bullet Train”) throw their entire bodies into sequences directed by the action designer behind films like “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” and “Raging Fire.”
The plotting of “The Furious” is just silly, and the dialogue sounds so poorly delivered at times that I first presumed it was dubbed, but none of that matters when this movie is in action mode. And it’s no exaggeration to say that roughly 3/4s of the film’s runtime consists of fighting. Not only is the action well-directed and choreographed—reminding one how great it is to see long, unbroken shots of ace stunt work—but the sound design deserves some flowers too. Every snap, crackle, and pop here sounds like it connects, often at the same time.
Finally, there’s the relatively inferior, especially compared to the ingenuity of the other two films in this dispatch, “Normal,” the latest in the surprisingly growing “Bob Odenkirk Kicks Ass” genre. The “Nobody” star is the best thing about this “Fargo Meets Hot Fuzz” riff, but it feels like an afterthought for the prolific Ben Wheatley, a genre director who works so often that he has another movie premiering at another film festival this month. I joked that he made “Normal” in a week, but it might be true. It’s basically a 45-minute set-up followed by a 45-minute action scene. Some of the latter is admittedly enjoyable and Odenkirk actually does differentiate this “normal guy turned killing machine” from his other “normal guy turned killing machine,” but it’s a movie that’s ultimately a tick too forgettable given the talent involved and even the relatively clever premise.
Working from a script by Derek Kolstad (who also penned the “Nobody” movies), “Normal” stars Odenkirk as Ulysses, the interim sheriff of a snow-covered small town. The other sheriff died of a heart attack. Or did he? Ulysses starts to realize that there’s something off about Normal from the slimy mayor (Henry Winkler) to the edgy woman (Lena Headey) he meets at a local watering hole.
When a pair of drifters tries to rob the bank, it sets a motion a series of events that leads to mass carnage. It turns out there’s something in the vault that no one in town wants stolen. And then the Yakuza get involved.
There are a lot of booms and bangs in “Normal,” but it’s all woefully underlit and much of it is poorly edited too. We know something explosive is happening, people die, rinse and repeat. Through it all, Odenkirk glides in his increasingly playful manner, an approach that conveys he knows this is all ridiculous, but he just wants you to have fun. You will for stretches of “Normal,” but not long enough to make it a town worth visiting.
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