Review of Bug (2007) by Samuel C — 19 Jun 2010

Part of what made me fall in love with Shotgun Stories is Michael Shannon's performance as the troubled, closed-off Son. He says so much in just a glance that it makes for an extremely powerful film. In director William Friedkin's Bug, Shannon shows a much more flamboyant side. He plays a man who is seemingly normal at first (for the most part), but quickly descends into a paranoid madness, dragging a perpetually abused waitress (Ashley Judd) with him.

The reasons that I liked the movie are also sort of the reasons that it can get grating quickly. The majority of the action takes place in a single motel room, a result of the transition from the stage to the screen. Bug was originally a play which Shannon actually starred in. Perhaps his comfort in the role of the drifter Peter Evans should not be surprising, given his history with the material. There are different threads of plot that start building, but then it all falls away as the strongest line of thought becomes clear: the place is crawling with bugs.

We never see the bugs, which leads most viewers to assume that there really are no bugs. I don't think that that is an unfair conclusion to arrive at, but I do think that that is the wrong question to be trying to answer. The presence of the insects is not so important as Peter's paranoia and how it infects the waitress Agnes. This is a movie that spirals out of control as the problem becomes ever more serious to the central characters - all other considerations fall by the wayside. If you're not there hanging on for dear life with them, then you might just feel trapped in a room with two actors who are just absolutely gnawing the scenery.

Personally, I found the actors' fevered intensity to be incredibly engaging. I am impressed by the way that the movie allowed the entire emotion to be carried by the actors themselves and some spare sound effects. But the claustrophobic feeling that the single setting instills also makes the movie hard to stomach. The final third of the movie is lit with a harsh blue light - to show how accustomed Peter and Agnes have come to be in their situation, sure, but it unfortunately also has the effect of keeping the audience uncomfortable. If that's the point, I definitely support it, albeit with some caveats. I'm not certain if that was the point, though, so it's difficult for me to endorse it.

Gaspar Noe's Irreversible was an amazing film, and part of what made it so amazing was the fact that it intentionally made its viewers uncomfortable through the use of low frequencies which can induce mild nausea. It purposefully puts you on edge, then it places you right inside the scene. Bug wants its viewers to follow the characters' descent, rather than simply watching it progress. So if it simultaneously intends to probe at the viewer's emotions, it is kind of working toward two disparate goals.

Mostly, though, I found Bug to be compelling in its composition and in the strength of its actors. A monologue by Agnes at Peter's prodding late in the film is honestly one of the most incredibly well-written and performed scenes I've witnessed in recent memory. This is a very intriguing and a very exciting movie... but I couldn't find a way to feel completely at home in it. Maybe it's the harsh lighting and limited space, maybe it's just a curse of the genre. I don't know. (Maybe part of it is in Friedkin's jarring cuts.) Whatever it is, there is definitely more to like here than there is to feel put off by. This is a very good movie.