Guillermo del Toro Calls This Mads Mikkelsen Genre-Bender, Now Free to Stream, “Extraordinary”
Mads Mikkelsen has been making waves in action movies over the last few years. See: The third Fantastic Beasts flick, Doctor Strange, and an entry into the Indiana Jones franchise. But now Mikkelsen is returning to his horror roots in Dust Bunny, which follows an 8-year-old girl who hires a hitman to take out the voracious monster under her bed.
Mikkelsen stars opposite David Dastmalchian, who descended into brilliant madness in Late Night with the Devil, and Sigourney Weaver, our OG ass-kicking space queen from the Alien franchise. More poignantly, Dust Bunny reunites Mikkelsen with Bryan Fuller for the former Hannibal showrunner’s feature-length directorial debut.
If you’re looking to cinematically pre-game for Dust Bunny and the recent Mufasa movie is less your speed, check out the Danish black comedy Druk, also known as Another Round.
Courtesy of Nordisk Film Distribution
What Another Round’s About
Mikkelsen stars as Martin, a history teacher in Copenhagen who is completely numb. So he decides to reinvigorate his life by maintaining a constant blood alcohol level of 0.05% or more, thanks to his shithead coworkers who join in on the social experiment — hence Druk, or “binge-drinking” in English.
There’s never a dull moment in this absolutely bonkers movie, which features a Mads Mikkelsen dance break. But the comedy mostly comes in uncomfortable doses. Another Round illuminates an undeniable truth: Getting turnt is a lot of fun, actually. Alcohol makes you witty and wild. The way it lowers your inhibitions can give you a new lease on life. But even though director Thomas Vinterberg completely romanticizes the benefits of liquid courage, he never ignores the more obvious truth: Getting hammered all day, every day, comes with ugly consequences.
Guillermo del Toro Loves the Film
Mikkelsen once told Dread Central his belief that Hannibal “thinks the threshold between life and death is extremely beautiful” — and you get a little glimpse of that in his Another Round character, too. This dark comedy has the grey moral compass of any slasher — and perhaps that’s why it appeals to the reigning king of gothic terror, Guillermo del Toro. “It’s extraordinary to see a movie that moves you, that affects you, the way this one did to me,” del Toro said in a Q&A with Mikkelsen and Vinterberg at the time of the movie’s release.
Del Toro, forever able to find beauty in the ugliest of things, noted the poetry in the film’s titles. “In English, it’s because Another Round means all these characters are going to get another round at life, and the other is about binge-drinking, the original title, but it is the same thing,” del Toro said. “Can we get intoxicated with life? Can we take it again?”
Watch the Trailer Here
While the movie may feel like body horror, especially for liquor lightweights, there’s a different terror lurking beneath the surface of this movie. Martin and his friends are the embattled friend group forced to survive the horrors, and the only killer chasing them is their penchant for vice.
Tune in to Tubi or Hulu to see which of these final girls makes it out alive.
Categorized: Streaming News