Review: ‘Bunny’ (2025), starring Mo Stark, Ben Jacobson, Liza Colby, Tony Drazan, Linda Rong Mei Chen, Eric Roth, Richard Price and Henry Czerny

November 23, 2025

by Carla Hay

“Bunny” (2025)

Directed by Ben Jacobson

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the comedy film “Bunny” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latin people, and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A hustler, his best friend, and other people who live in the same apartment building try to hide the body of a man the hustler accidentally killed.

Culture Audience: “Bunny” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the low-budget independent films about.

“Bunny” is a shaggy but watchable 2020s movie that pays tribute to absurdist stoner comedies of the 1990s. The plot (about New York City apartment dwellers trying to hide a dead man’s body) drags and wears thin by the middle of the movie, but there are some genuinely funny moments. It’s probably why “Bunny” would’ve been better as a short film.

As it stands, “Bunny” (which clocks in at 87 minutes) doesn’t get too long-winded. It’s the type of movie best appreciated by people who like to see movies about misfits and weirdos getting into conflicts and trying to get out of one mishap after another. Much of the comedy in “Bunny” comes from the fact that many of the film’s main characters are too stoned to think clearly.

Directed by Ben Jacobson, “Bunny” had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival. Jacobson, Mo Stark and Stefan Marolachakis co-wrote the “Bunny” screenplay. The movie takes place over a 24-hour period on a summer day in New York City’s East Village, where “Bunny” was filmed on location. Most of the movie’s scenes take place inside or nearby the apartment building, thereby keeping the plot fairly uncomplicated.

“Bunny” is named after the movie’s main protagonist, who does occasional voiceover narration, where he gives hindsight commentary. Bunny (played by Stark) is first seen handcuffed in the back of a police car. It happens to be Bunny’s birthday. He says in the voiceover, “Today, I fucked up. I upended the lives of people I love the most: my family.”

What exactly did Bunny do? He accidentally killed a man named Calvin, a stranger who attacked Bunny in a fight inside the apartment building. Most of the movie is about Bunny enlisting the help of friends and neighbors to hide the body.

Why doesn’t Bunny call the police and claim self-defense? Bunny doesn’t want to deal with law enforcement because he does illegal work as a gigolo servicing women and men. Bunny has assumed that the dead stranger who attacked Bunny was getting revenge for a recent sex worker job that went wrong when Bunny assaulted two male clients who got rough with Bunny during a sexual encounter.

This client attack incident is not shown in a flashback but is described by Bunny in a detailed confession to Bunny’s somewhat dimwitted best friend Dino (played by Jacobson), who lives on the same apartment floor as Bunny but in a different apartment unit. Bunny makes this confession in an apartment hallway and is overheard by an unnamed rabbi (played by Henry Czerny), who pops up later in the story.

The movie takes a little too long to get to the main conflict (what to do about the dead body), because this plot development doesn’t happen until almost halfway through the story. Before that, “Bunny” consists of a series of scenes showing the people in the apartment building who will get involved in this cover-up. It’s a motley crew that isn’t always beliveable, but there can be suspension of disbelief because “Bunny” is a comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

There are many things in “Bunny” that are nods to the 1990s. Bunny looks like grunge rocker from the 1990s. Dino looks like bleach-blonde skateboarder from the 1990s. At one point in the movie, Bunny and Dino both wear jerseys sporting the name of the 1995 movie “The Basketball Diaries,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a New York City teenage basketball player who gets addicted to drugs. (“The Basketball Diaries” movie is based on Jim Carroll’s 1978 memoir of the same name.)

“Bunny” has a gritty visual aesthetic that is similar to independent drama films that were set in 1990s New York City, where the main characters (just like the main characters in “Bunny”) live in run-down apartment buildings that have unpleasant and unidentifiable smells. The main characters in these movies are often up to some type of illegal mischief. 1995’s “Kids” (directed by Larry Clark) and 1992’s “Bad Lieutenant” (directed by Abel Ferrara) come to mind.

In addition to Bunny and Dino, the conspirators to hide the body are:

• Bobbie (played by Liza Colby), Bunny’s sexually fluid and fun-loving wife, who works as a production designer.
• Linda (played by Linda Rong Mei Chen), the apartment building’s feisty manager/landlord.
• Happy Chana (played by Genevieve Hudson-Price), an Orthodox Jewish divorcée who is renting a room from Bunny and Bobbie for a few days because she’s traveled from Tarzana, California, to meet an online boyfriend in person for the first time.
• Loren (played by Tony Drazan, also known as Anthony Drazan), Bobbie’s estranged father who shows up unannounced after not seeing Bobbie for years.
• Ciel (played by Kia Warren), a friend of Bunny’s and Bobbie’s, who spends most of her screen time getting high on cocaine and marijuana.

Complicating matters are two New York Police Department officers, who seem to have nothing better to do during their work time but loiter in outside of the apartment building and pester the building’s residents and people walking on the street about where to get certain types of fast food. The two cops are Officer Cellestino (played by Ajay Naidu) and Officer Nadov (played by Liz Caribel Sierra), who are quick to misuse their authority in ways that are meant to intimidate people over trivial matters. Officer Cellestino and Office Nadov frequently stop and question Bunny throughout the movie.

The beginning of the movie shows Bunny, who has noticeable fight wounds, as he frantically runs with a travel bag through the streets. He ducks into a park to change his clothes and then runs back to his apartment. It’s later revealed that he was running away from the incident where he assaulted two of his clients. Based on the way Bunny describes the assault, he was acting in self-defense.

Early in the movie’s voiceover narration, Bunny compares his gigolo work to being like Richard Gere in the 1980 movie “American Gigolo.” Bunny is kind of delusional, because he doesn’t do high-priced escort work, like Gere’s character in “American Gigolo.” Bunny says in the narration that the sex work that Bunny does is “a means to an end for a beautiful life.”

Not much else is revealed about Bunny except that he has a reputation in his apartment building for being friendly and helpful. For example, there are multiple scenes where Bunny assists a disabled neighbor named Ian (played by Richard Price) by carrying items (such as laundry) up and down the apartment stairs. (It’s a walk-up apartment building with no elevator.)

Before the dilemma over the dead body happens, Bobbie introduces Bunny to a woman named Daphne (played by Eleonore Hendricks), who has agreed to have a threesome with the couple to celebrate Bunny’s birthday. Bobbie also has some molly (ecstasy) and excitedly tells Bunny that a hotel room has been rented for this threesome. However, Bunny says he’s not interested because he doesn’t feel well.

Bobbie gets upset and storms off, bringing Daphne with her. (Bobbie and Daphne eventually come back to the apartment, where more hijinks ensue.) While Bobbie is temporarily away, her father Loren shows up because his current wife has broken up with him, and he needs a place to stay. Loren and Bobbie are estranged because Loren abandoned Bobbie and Bobbie’s mother (his ex-wife) when Bobbie was a child.

Meanwhile, Linda is angry because a young male tenant (played by Anthony Rodriguez) is long overdue on paying rent. The tenant isn’t returning her messages or answering when she knocks on his door, which seems to be barricaded. What happened to this tenant is eventually revealed in the movie.

There are also three “party girl” tenants who are friends with each other and are seen going in and out of the building: Betty (played by Noa Fisher), Elaine (played by Jaeden Gomez, also known as Jaeden Rae Gomez) and Yaz (played by Yaz Perea), who invite Bunny and his pals to a party in the midst of this chaos. These three characters aren’t really essential to the movie’s plot, but they add to the frenetic atmosphere.

“Bunny” has some cliché slapstick comedy and a few predictable scenarios. But some of the characters are written with specific quirks that make them unique enough for this movie. For example, Dino doesn’t have much common sense, but he’s a movie fanatic who can quote and namecheck trivia from his most-liked films. (He mentions 2006’s “The Departed” and 2007’s “There Will Be Blood.”)

There’s also a running joke about Happy Chana, who is very neurotic and particular about how people say her name. (Chana is pronounced Hanna.) She always introduces herself by saying that people can call her Happy Chana or Chana Eliza, but never just Chana. The joke is funny the first three times it’s in the movie, but it quickly gets old the more it’s repeated.

Happy Chana is also very religious and refuses to be in Bunny’s apartment unless Bobbie or two other women are there, because Orthodox Judaism teaches that a single woman cannot be in a space with a man unless the man’s wife or two other women are there. Bunny needs the money that Happy Chana is paying, so he has to accommodate her demands. While Bobbie is away, Linda and Ciel are the two women who can fulfill Happy Chana’s Orthodox Jewish protocol requirements.

Stark’s portrayal of Bunny has enough charisma to keep people watching when parts of the movie tend to be come tedious. Stark and Jacobson, who are friends in real life, have an easy chemistry together as Bunny and Dino. Colby does well in her role as outspoken Bobbie, while Hudson-Price is a scene-stealer as nervous Happy Chana.

The tone of “Bunny” is both freewheeling and tension-filled. Although some of the situations are definitely over-the-top, “Bunny” is an authentically New York City movie that skillfully captures a lot of the attitude and eccentricities that really are a part of New York City’s East Village culture. Despite many of the seedy and crude things that happen in the movie, “Bunny” leaves room for some sweet sentimentality about the power of community camaraderie.

Vertical released “Bunny” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 17, 2025.