Bug

Starring: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr. Directed by: William Friedkin Runtime: 102 min. Rated: R Release date: May 25, 2007 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
8 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 9.5 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 5 Funny . . . . . . . . 4

The Hooksexup Review

Once upon a time, William Friedkin was Hollywood's premier director of thoughtful genre flicks. Who else could have snagged ten Oscar nominations for a film like The Exorcist? With disposable work like The Hunted and The Rules of Engagement, he's been in a wilderness for the past decade or so (some would say longer), but he appears to have found his moorings with Bug, a tense psychological thriller that indulges his obsession with extreme behavior and tells a riveting tale.

Based on Tracy Letts' play (and adapted by the playwright himself), Bug pairs lonely waitress Agnes (Ashley Judd) with unnervingly nice war vet Peter (Michael Shannon) in an Oklahoma motel room. For all his crippling, slightly creepy shyness, Peter seems to be an honest, stand-up guy, so we can understand why Agnes is taken with him (especially after we meet her former lover, an abusive ex-con played by Harry Connick). And when Peter claims that their motel room is infested by dangerous, microscopic bugs, we, like Agnes, want to believe him.

To reveal more would do Friedkin and Letts a disservice, although I should note that Lionsgate's trailers for the film, which suggest an Exorcist-esque horror flick, are misleading. Bug does share some qualities with The Exorcist, though — not because it's a sensational genre flick but because, like Friedkin's best films, it explores the ways a forceful presence or personality can take over the desperate. Put two people in a room, and other directors might be interested in the struggle between their two personalities; Friedkin understands that more often than not, one easily dominates the other. He's interested in the process of subordination.

Friedkin has directed some truly intense performances over the years, and Judd and Shannon display a remarkable ability to ratchet up their characters' growing desperation. But perhaps their greatest asset is their chemistry. True, this is a dark chamber piece, where the landscape of the mind becomes palpably real, and a claustrophobic hotel room becomes a breeding ground for paranoia and madness. But it's also, in the end, the unlikeliest of love stories. — Bilge Ebiri

Other Reviews

New York Magazine
David Edelstein
"Has the feverish compression of live theater and the moody expansiveness of film. The mix is insanely powerful. . . line by line, beat by beat, it's gripping stuff. . . a live-wire experience. . ."
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Village Voice
Rob Nelson
"Flamboyantly absurd. . . And yet its psychological insights into mental illness remain acute, even sensitive. . . Bug has an aesthetic bead on the cut-rate menace of motel hell. . . Principally a showcase for actors, rarely more than two on-screen at a time. . . turning Bug itself from a horror movie into something like a love story."
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The Hollywood Reporter
Duane Byrge
"A genre film torched with psychological accelerants. . . straddle[s] a wickedly fine line between taut portrayal of paranoia and parody of paranoia. . . when synopsized, Bug sounds like high camp, but it is smartly and convincingly fleshed out, at least enough to fit inside and burst the seams of generic dimension."
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LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
"Plays more like lousy dinner theater doing its darnedest to give American paranoia a bad name. . . . [an] irretrievably ridiculous drama. . ."
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Variety
Todd McCarthy
"A ranting, claustrophobic drama that trades in shopworn paranoid notions. . . assaults the viewer with aggressive thesping and over-the-top notions of shocking incident, all to intensely alienating effect. . . some grotesquely gory incidents are introduced in the name of violent intensity."
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Your Reviews

It has been a long time since I sat curled at the corner of my couch wishing for a movie to end. The viewing experience made me uneasy and skiddish, like the first time I watched The Cell. Sick Fascination. Psychologiacally both moving pictures just dug in and stayed with me for days. I've been of the opinion for the last few years that mental illness, particulary clinical psychosis (ie delusions of persecution snensory hallucination) has endless potential for solid stories. Especially coupled with maniaor schizo-affective. Too much expalnation of clinical psychology could serve moot and distracting in the story but with so many knuckleheads who seemingly believe schizophrenics have "multiple personalities" someone should write the record straight. Dissassociative Disorder (multiple personalititties) is extrememyl rare, very diificult to diagnose, and when such diagnosisis
's is warranted, it is usually in women due to extremem emotional or sexual abuse as children. Said persona's are created in the mind to escape. Man, I heard, what was the name of that John Cusak Movie, at the hotel, ... anyway, folks with multiple personalities don't know they exist. IDENTITY Greeat falkland movie.

In conclusion, Bug was the most intense movie I'd seen in years. When that bozo started yanking his teeth out. Ashley Judd looks gooooooooood goin crazy.
THe following quote has nothing to do with this moving picture. Sort of.
"And I think that the real truth of fiction is that fiction is the truth; moral fiction is the truth inside the lie. And if you lie in yer fiction, you are immoral and have no business writing at all." RB/SK
, as is not common with textbook schizophrenia (except subtype Catatonic),

posted by spectrumseven on 2/1/2008 7:03:57 PM
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