Review of Bug (2007) by Paul Z — 18 Aug 2010

Bug is a film that is really unlike any other film. It's a film that one can't really describe, or more fairly, a film that one can't assign a genre, subgenre, or style to, and as you watch it, you know that it was intended by both the famously acute director William Friedkin and the dark and deeply perceptive writer, Tracey Letts. The film is subtle because its genuine eeriness counts on the power of its intimate cast. Before mentioning any of the actors, let me state that they all go through a drastic arch is some way, and each does it like a chameleon. Ashley Judd gives the performance of her career as a sad, pathetic woman who doesn't expect or have any clue how little control she has left over her mind. Michael Shannon makes his career here, in a role that trains the camera---initially---on a sort of person that we never see the true colors of in a movie. He is indirect, constantly on a hidden defense somehow, and many-layered in a way that can only be written or acted if there has been an actual encounter with a similar person in life. Harry Connick, Jr. does not only play an abusive, pride-stuck man, but a man who truly knows the art of human nastiness, duplicitous yet childish yet intuitive and completely hurtful exchange that is also something that is rarely captured in its birthday suit on film.

Friedkin always has a studied, ear-piercing-sized visual approach to his films, and here, his sets, the background and corners of every shot, are dirtied with the scuzziness of sad, drunk, slobbish life. There is a deeply dusty, crusty, blackened, smeared look to everything, and like every other aspect to this film, all you have to do is look closely.

Mainly thanks to Tracey Letts's script, it's a story that doesn't let you sit back so it can do everything for you. It pulls you in and it becomes interactive. It has a slow and completely unpredictable build-up. We know that something is going to happen, but the only way to describe the only thing that we can logically guess or feel is simply that, "something.".