Posted: 05/26/2007

Bug

(2007)

by Matt Wedge

To say that William Friedkin has been something of an uneven filmmaker in his long career might be an understatement. For every triumph like The French Connection or The Exorcist, there’s an unmitigated disaster in films like Cruising and Jade. But nothing he has done can prepare the viewer for the glorious mess that is Bug.

Ashley Judd (Kiss the Girls) stars as Agnes, a lonely, emotionally fragile waitress living in a squalid motel room in rural Oklahoma. Depressed by the disappearance of her son ten years earlier and living in fear of the impending release of Jerry, her scumbag ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr., Copycat) from prison, she is sinking fast into alcoholism. When she is introduced to the awkward and shy Peter (Michael Shannon, 8 Mile), she feels a connection, which leads to her fateful decision to let him stay the night. It isn’t long before Jerry shows up, bullying Agnes and disrupting her and Peter’s brief period of relative happiness and calm. Agnes finally works up the courage to kick Jerry out, but things get much worse when Peter starts to notice that her motel room is infected with bugs. Or is it? Peter makes some surprising revelations about his past that bring into question his sanity. As his behavior and paranoid ramblings become more and more outlandish, Agnes finds her own tenuous grip on reality slipping. It isn’t long before she starts seeing the bugs as well and forming her own theories about the disappearance of her son that has led to her miserable existence.

Friedkin pulls no punches in depicting the descent into madness of these two sad, sympathetic characters. If he had decided to play it completely straight, he might have crafted a masterpiece that examines the psychological pain that paranoid schizophrenics go through and the terrible strain it takes on those who care about them. Instead, he attempts to balance the inherent grim drama of the story with moments of pitch-black humor and scenes of horror that seem to come straight out of the brain of Clive Barker. The abrupt shifts in tone actually works to alienate the audience making them unsure of when to feel for the characters, laugh or be horrified. Still, there is a strange primal power that the film exudes. As the characters are sent hurtling from one emotional extreme to the other, the visual pace of the film follows them, creating a visceral experience that is hard pressed to ignore.

The performances are almost consistently over the top. Ever since her breakthrough performance in Ruby in Paradise, Judd has been the model of the Hollywood actress that plays it safe. Here she lets it all hang out, to very mixed results. The early scenes of her quiet despair, heartbreak, and ever-present fear are played with an understated honesty that is a complete departure from her performance in the rest of the film. Once the madness sets in, she bugs (no pun intended) her eyes out, twitches, talks rapidly, and generally chews up the scenery like Joan Crawford after eight espressos. Following along, matching her twitch for twitch is Shannon. His Peter goes from looking and sounding like a slightly more intelligent version of Karl from Sling Blade to a man who thinks nothing of repeatedly cutting himself to dig out imaginary bugs from under his skin. The only cast-member that manages to show a little restraint is Connick. He tweaks his awe-shucks nice guy attitude just slightly to portray Jerry as a passive-aggressive jerk. It’s a performance that borders on subtlety and therefore, feels almost out of place.

Tracy Letts adapted his own play for the screen and its theatrical origins are very obvious from the small cast size and minimum number of locations. His dialogue has the overly wordy ring of a play, but this works to the advantage of the film as the characters sink further into madness and their rants become more and more ridiculous. The scene where Peter lays out a nation-wide conspiracy of mind-control and name checks everyone from Jim Jones to Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh is both oddly hilarious and scary, yet rings true in its obsessive sincerity.

Bug isn’t a perfect film. It’s exhausting, frustrating, and elicits some embarrassed laughter at unintentional points. But it’s also challenging, gutsy, and truthful in its own warped manner. This is definitely not a film for every taste, but no matter how you end up feeling about it, you have to admit that it does make you feel something. In a day and age of soulless filmmaking by committee that leave the viewer empty, Friedkin deserves credit for making a film that brings about such a wide and conflicting range of emotions that doesn’t take the easy way out.

Matt Wedge is a writer and film reviewer living in Chicago.

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