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Sundance 2025 Review: Bunnylovr

A still from Bunnylovr by Katarina Zhu, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

In her small apartment, Rebecca (Katarina Zhu), is working from home.  Living in Brooklyn, she has a side gig to make ends meet, as a ‘cam girl’ where audiences pay for her online company.  She doesn’t meet up with the men she meets online, but occasionally she’ll take a private chat for an extra fee.  One such customer is jas95, a user who at first won’t turn his camera on.  But he wants to send her a gift.  “I think it’ll make you less lonely,” he says.

She is, in fact, gifted a white rabbit, and like Alice in Wonderland, following that white rabbit takes her to places she never expected, not all for the better.  This relationship she forges with this online admirer, John (eventually played by Austin Amelio, great in last year’s Hit Man) gets dark.  It becomes clear that he seems to get off on making any living creature uncomfortable, instructing her to lift the rabbit up by its ears.  “Trust me, I know what they can handle,” he says ominously as the rabbit squeals in the background.  (See my animal warning at the end of this review)

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But it seems like most of the relationships Rebecca has are toxic in one way or another.  Her best friend, played by a cutting Rachel Sennott, doesn’t have many nice things to say to her, instead just using her as her muse for her painting.  Her ex-boyfriend uses her for sex when they meet up before demanding his apartment key back.  Her boss where she works as some sort of personal assistant constantly yells at her.  Rebecca runs into her estranged father on the street who seems to want to reconnect and you think finally perhaps there is someone who doesn’t want something from this young woman, but even still he wants her help cheating at cards to win some money.

In Bunnylovr, one keeps waiting for Rebecca to realize that she is being used in all of her relationships, but she has trapped herself inside this net, as has Zhu being writer, director, and star in her debut feature.  It seems like there are a lot of good ideas and complex relationships that sometimes aren’t fully explored.  The reasoning behind some of Rebecca’s actions often aren’t clear.  Like when she eventually decides to meet up with John despite his increasingly creepy and dangerous exchanges.  As someone who grew up in the online era and should be more attuned to the dangers of internet meetups, this seems a strange action to take.

Zhu’s shooting style is close-up and personal, like we are really seeing her on the webcam.  Though its use seems reasonable initially, it’s utilized through so much of the film that it had me yearning for a wide shot.  The framing surely is there to accentuate Rebecca’s loneliness and isolation, but the claustrophobic style wasn’t necessary to carry through feeling redundant.

The one relationship that does seem to be the most emotionally available is the one Rebecca does eventually forge with her ailing father.  Perhaps this is because it is most personal to the Zhu, herself estranged from her father, and she can give the most insight into her character.  This was the arc most deftly handled by the new director, and where her promise as a filmmaker truly shines through.

Bunnylovr premiered January 25, 2025 at the Sundance Film Festival.  For more information head to Sundance.org

For those sensitive to scenes with animals: No rabbit is harmed in this film! I am happy to report that even though an immense feeling of dread for the rabbit persists through this movie, Milk, as the bunny is eventually named comes out unscathed.  The scene where she holds the animal up by the ears is shot in such a way that you know it is not truly happening (and she then takes it to the vet!)

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