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BUG
Directed by: William Friedkin.
Produced by: Holly Wiersma, Kimberly C. Anderson, Malcoln Petal, Gary Huckabay, Michael Burns & Andreas Schardt.
Written by Tracy Letts, based on his play.
Director of Photography: Michael Grady.
Edited by Darrin Navarro.
Released by: Lionsgate.
Country of Origin: USA. 102 min. Rated R.
With: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Lynn Collins, Brian F. O’Byrne & Harry Connick Jr.

Bug doesn’t succumb to what the trailer might suggest, a horror film, until its second half, opening in a more traditional psychological vein like Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, as tired and slightly hung-over cocktail waitress Agnes (Ashley Judd) walks on egg shells in her home, an Oklahoman motel room. Her abusive husband has just gotten out of prison, and when she answers a barrage of phone calls, she hears only silence on the other end. A night later, she parties at her place with a co-worker who has brought along a drifter, Peter (Shannon), whose very first words are “I’m not an axe murderer,” in a tone too awkward for sarcasm. Agnes lets him stay over for the night – on the couch. The next day, despite a declaration from Peter disregarding any sex, one thing leads to another, and the obligatory scene comes to call.

It was shortly after this I thought “This is where it gets weird.” A downward spiral develops within Peter’s mind, and the title creatures become a driving force, stirring up some of the most creepy terrain Friedkin has ventured on since his quintessential classic, The Exorcist. Peter is convinced that the bugs he sees in the room are also in his body, and his obsessive paranoia spreads to Agnes. Having consuming so much liquor and coke, she is almost at his mercy. How and why this happens to her is part of Bug’s appeal, but there’s a level of logic with the characters that gets thrown up in the air as Friedkin pushes Tracy Letts's script to the edge of credibility. By the climax, the actors descend into craziness less akin to The Exorcist and, unfortunately, closer to the hysterical nature of the last chunk, no pun intended, of Saw.

Yet, Friedkin and his actors aren’t exactly capable of the notable wretched excess of a Saw film, despite Letts’s tendencies for lines like Agnes’s “I AM THE SUPER MOTHER BUG!” From start to finish, cinematographer Michael Grady manages to walk a line between a deliberately-paced work like Polanski’s and the jerky hand-held mode of many modern splatter films, à la The Devil’s Rejects. Judd, by the way, departs from her usual starring vehicles (Double Jeopardy, Where the Heart Is) in this emotionally wide-ranging performance. And not simply deranged, Shannon is vulnerable, scarred, and all jangled nerves. Seeing a guy like Peter freak-out leaves one’s mouth agape.

Ending on a solidly bleak note, Bug almost turns into a B movie veering between horror and garish black comedy. But it does show Friedkin to still be attempting new things. It’s hard to imagine that he, now 71, has made a film that has the feel of being made by someone decades younger. Jack Gattanella
May 28, 2007