movie review: Bug

I went to see Bug expecting a gory, insect-infested shlockfest. Mutant cockroaches gnawing peoples' eyeballs and the like. After all, they "feed on your brain," promised the trailer, amid quick cuts of bloody mayhem. I was surprised to find something completely different, an arresting drama, a psychological thriller that actually probes the human psyche and asks questions about sanity, addiction, abandonment and paranoia. But I understand the studio's decision to sell Bug as a typical horror flick. For one, a movie this unorthodox must've been hell on a marketing team. And secondly, the film does succeed in giving quite a scare.

Bug tells the story of Agnes White (Ashley Judd), a crystal meth addict who lives in a rundown motel and waitresses at the local dive bar in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma. Alone and depressed, Agnes fears the return of her abusive ex-husband, Goss (Harry Connick Jr.), an ex-convict fresh out of the pen. Goss is the father to her only child, a boy who disappeared 10 years ago in a grocery store when he was six years old. One night Agnes' friend introduces her to Peter Evans (Michael Shannon), a shy, stoic Gulf War veteran, who espouses a unique worldview and only gradually reveals the tendencies of a paranoid schizophrenic. "I like hearin' you talk," she tells him early on. They soon sleep together and from there it's a descent into madness for the bruised, vulnerable Agnes. Peter drags her into his delusional world, where government conspiracies lie everywhere--even in the bugs he claims have infested her hotel room.

The film is adapted from the Tracy Letts play of the same name (Letts also wrote the screenplay) and it still feels very much like a stage production. It takes place almost entirely in the motel room. It consists of a few lengthy scenes, mostly duologues between the two leads, and it relies heavily on the strengths of its very small cast. Judd and Shannon (reprising his role from the off Broadway production) are terrific as the unlikely lovers. Retreating into isolation and paranoid fantasies, Agnes and Peter enable one another's self-destruction by rejecting the few individuals who try to help them and reintroduce them to some semblance of reality.

Harry Connick Jr., too, is excellent, in an unexpected turn as Goss, a violent lowlife who turns out to be a voice of reason. People "try to control you, they try to force you to act a certain way," says Peter of Goss. "They can make you crazy, too." We understand Agnes' hatred of Goss--he is a brutal, ugly man, and the source of much of her anxiety. But it's ironic that he's trying to help Agnes while Peter is the one who finally drives her mad.

Bug finally builds to a conclusion which, if perhaps inevitable, is handled with a dose of melodrama that, up until that point, the film has been careful to avoid. The ending aside, however, director William Friedkin has crafted a riveting, claustrophobic film, meticulously paced to allow for a clean evolution of its characters, and superbly acted by a cast that truly inhabits its roles. Judd's Agnes is so alone and abused, so steeped in drug addiction, so desperate for hope and meaning that she seeks refuge in the arms of a very sick individual and never looks back. While Bug does have a few bloody, violent moments, it's these honest explorations of human need, malleability and fear which make the film genuinely unnerving and scarier than so much of the torture porn and gore-filled horror swill that comes down the pipeline.