William Friedkin’s new Bug is being advertised as a straight-up horror film, invoking his Academy Award (for The French Connection) as well as his cachet as director of the original The Exorcist. But audiences expecting something spooky (or perhaps funny, like last year’s Slither) will probably want their money back. For one thing, Bug is based on an off-Broadway play and takes place almost entirely in a dingy, remote motel room. For another, looming helicopters and evil bugs won’t raise many neck hairs, but worrying about them can induce panic.
Picture the hospital scene in The Exorcist, in which Regan undergoes a barrage of horrifying-looking tests (a robotic X-ray machine, a tube inserted into a spurting vein), and you’ll have a better idea of Bug. This is dramatic horror on a human scale. Friedkin’s trademark has always been his intense, journalistic research into his subject matter, grounding each film in reality. Bug is deliberately evasive, talking in the rattling, inconclusive language of conspiracies and paranoia, neither proving nor disproving anything.
Cocktail waitress Agnes (Judd) lives a sad, lonely existence, hiding from a sadistic ex (Connick) and mourning the loss of a young son. Her best friend (Collins) introduces her to Peter (Shannon—who also appeared in the play), and they hit it off. Before long, Peter begins to feel bug bites and announces that bugs are crawling around under his skin. Agnes begins to believe him, and she, too, suffers bites. Peter explains that, as an ex-soldier, he was the victim of government experiments. The frightening thing is that he has a fully formed explanation for everything that happens, whereas the other side of the coin is merely he’s nuts. Which to believe?
Friedkin doesn’t bother to open any of this up. Rather, he jumps at the chance to make the room shrink, from the weak light that seeps through the curtains during the first section to the striking tinfoil look of the final section. Judd and Shannon handle their intimate moments with impressive skill, but these are, above all, shockingly physical performances that must have required uncanny focus and perhaps lots of naps in between. No fooling: This is a crazy, intense creepster of a movie, masterfully directed in great sinking movements. It’s The Exorcist for a darker time.
Bug
4 stars
Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr., Lynn Collins
Directed by William Friedkin
Rated R
Opens Friday