‘Bad Bunny’ VOD Review
Stars: Karolina Morrongiello, Jen Elyse Feldy, Kris Fried, John P Coulter, Dino Castelli, Kathy Ciesielski, Robert Durgin, John Schaub | Written and Directed by Chuck Morrongiello
Some films announce exactly what they are from the title alone. Bad Bunny should be one of them. A 2025 micro-budget slasher formerly known as Bunny Killer, written and directed by Chuck Morrongiello and starring his wife Karolina Morrongiello, it sounds like the kind of movie that should lean gleefully into the absurdity of a human-sized murder rabbit. Instead, it plays things strangely straight – a decision that both helps and hurts a film that feels like an ambitious step for its creators, yet still stuck in tonal no-man’s land.
Karolina plays a grieving widow who relocates to a rural cabin, unaware that a hulking, bipedal bunny creature is hopping around the American wilderness, leaving bodies in its wake. That premise alone feels lovingly ripped from a lost ’80s VHS sleeve, but then comes that opening scene: a redneck farmer attempting relations with an actual rabbit, implying that this unholy union created our villain. It’s not graphic, but it absolutely screams, “Welcome to the schlock zone!” a promise the rest of the movie frustratingly ignores.
And yet… the bunny looks great. No, not biologically plausible (thank whatever gods you worship), but the suit is surprisingly cool: gnarly teeth, a movable jaw, fake muscle definition, the whole “feral Easter Bunny” aesthetic. In a full-tilt comedy splatterfest, this design would be a star. Even the score, also by Chuck, gives the film a twangy, Deliverance-adjacent vibe that’s oddly fitting.
On the technical front, Bad Bunny is pleasingly competent for a shoestring rural slasher. Decent lighting, clear audio, and framing that mostly works. There’s even a handful of fun kills: carrots through eyeballs (after the fact – budget reality strikes), a few chopped-up victims, and some satisfying practical aftermaths. The ending, while downbeat, has a nice poetic sting and shows an understanding of how to land a small-scale genre movie.
But the problem, and it’s a big one, is tone. Bad Bunny sets up a gonzo, knowingly ridiculous horror romp… then insists on being Very Serious Cinema. Karolina’s character spends much of the runtime sprinting through the woods, sobbing, nursing wounds, and drinking tea in drawn-out scenes that feel like padding. At least 80% of the movie is just her running, pausing, hurting, then running again, occasionally bumping into other victims before they get dispatched. Instead of embracing camp, the film lingers on emotional beats it hasn’t earned, asking you to empathise when you’re still wondering why the film refused to lean into its own premise.
Worse, it squanders dozens of easy comedic opportunities. A woman throws boiling water onto a monster bunny and doesn’t shout “bunny boiler”? That alone should be a cinematic crime. The movie desperately needs winks, nods, even a single carrot-based pun — anything to acknowledge how inherently silly “human-sized killer rabbit” actually is.
Add in stretches where nothing happens beyond household chores and wound-whimpering, and the film starts feeling exactly like what it likely was: a short stretched to feature length. The script has so little incident that scenes are forced to linger long past their usefulness, turning what should be a zippy creature feature into a slow shuffle.
Still, Bad Bunny shows growth. Chuck and Karolina have clearly levelled up, and there’s real effort on display. The suit rocks. The kills work. There’s enough novelty to keep creature-feature completists entertained. It’s just that the film never decides whether it wants to be a straight slasher or a schlock-fest, and ends up stuck between both.
A mildly diverting watch for lovers of creature-costume oddities – but not the gonzo cult classic it easily could have been.
** 2/5
Bad Bunny is available to stream on Tubi now.
