Director Teemu Niukkanen’s is a dark and demented comedy about living in a place where pretty much anyone can move in next door and how we can rush to judgment too often and brush off some pretty nice people. Thought it’s only a short film, “Fucking Bunnies” could work as a hilarious and twisted feature film about the uneasy friendship between two very different men. Raimo is a middle-aged Finnish man living in the suburbs in an apartment complex in Helsinki. He’s a very settled and tightly wound man who lives his day of monotony joyfully. One day when the new neighbors move in next door, he learns that they are a cult of Satanists that indulge in orgies, and sadism.
Raimo is disturbed when very friendly and outgoing cult leader Maki introduces himself and seems intent on making friends with Raimo and his wife. Despite his wife’s open mindedness, Raimo makes it clear to Maki that he has no intention of being friends. But when Raimo loses his squash partner, Maki seeks him out to try the sport, and perhaps share more about his lifestyle with him. What really works and makes “Fucking Bunnies” so funny is how straight face every comedic element is. It’s especially humorous to see the way Maki approaches his life. He walks around in satanic face paint, open robes that display his genitals, and holds raucous sex parties without the least bit of subtlety.
One hilarious moments even finds Maki giving Raimo a pep talk while one of his followers performs anal sex on a woman, only inches away. “Fucking Bunnies” is a finely written and hilarious tale about xenophobia and how we should always be willing to open our minds to everyone else’s rituals and lifestyles. Director Teemu Niukkanen simultaneously transforms “Fucking Bunnies” in to a running joke, involving a lot of outlandish situations that are given mundane responses. The icing on the cake is the final scene which didn’t just inspire a hearty laugh, but literally left me gazing in absolute disbelief. Teemu Niukkanen has a knack for conveying the more absurd comical situations, and “Fucking Bunnies” is a great sample of what he can accomplish with future cinematic endeavors.