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Written by Colin Covert, MCT
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Wednesday, 23 May 2007 |
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___
BUG
3 ½ stars
Starring: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.
Directed by: William Friedkin
Rated R for ome strong violence, sexuality, nudity, language and drug use.
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 William Friedkin is a merchant of nightmares, from the car-crunching violence of "The French Connection" to the occult dread of "The Exorcist" to the South American survivalist drama of "Sorcerer." His movies don't go away after you've seen them, but remain in your head for days, working their claws into your anxieties.
His newest, "Bug," is a film of excruciating intensity, a psychodrama that infects the imagination.
Agnes (Ashley Judd) lives in a rundown efficiency in the Rustic Motel, a dump on a desolate stretch of the American plains. She's isolated and alienated, medicating herself with vodka and cocaine and waitressing at a bustling lesbian bar. She's physically affectionate with her fellow server R.C. (Lynn Collins), not because she's inclined in that direction but because she's starved for human contact. Her abusive ex-husband Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.) is in prison, and their 6-year-old vanished a decade earlier.
There's nobody in her life until R.C. introduces her to Peter (Michael Shannon), a tall, soft-spoken drifter. Peter's looking for a place to crash, and repeatedly tells Agnes "I'm not an ax murderer," and that he's not interested in sex. Agnes' phone has been ringing with hang-up calls, and an ominous helicopter-like rumble keeps buffeting the motel, so having a man sleep on the couch offers a scrap of security and companionship. He moves in, opening a Pandora's box of psychological baggage.
Peter explains that he's a veteran on the run from the government, whose doctors used him as a Petri dish for an experiment marrying surveillance technology and bio-warfare. There are bugs inside his skin, he says, signaling his position to the men pursuing him.
This lunacy begins to persuade Agnes, because Peter has a ready explanation for every odd circumstance in her life. Newly freed Jerry begins pounding on the motel door - why was he paroled early? What became of Agnes' child? Peter supplies a paranoid framework that finds order in the wreckage of her life, and Agnes gratefully conforms to his conspiracy fantasy.
Soon her sanity is in a death spiral, underscored by the madhouse set design and lighting of the last act, when the pair wall themselves off from the outside world. Agnes is looking through Peter's dinky chemistry-set microscope at slides of his blood and seeing whatever he tells her to see. Her delusions may include the mysterious Dr. Sweet (Brian F. O'Byrne), who stops by for an ominous chat and a hit off the couple's crack pipe.
Working in the claustrophobic manner of Cronenberg and Polanski, Friedkin orchestrates the mounting tension to a literally explosive climax. Even if you avert your eyes from Peter's masochistic efforts to dig the bugs out of his body, you'll be shaken by what you hear, so vividly does the director paint with sound.
He works wonders with the cast as well. Watching Judd's disturbing, emotionally naked performance is like sticking your finger in a socket. Pushing the limits of her familiar woman-in-peril character, she really seems to be coming unglued. "Bug" should do for her career what "Monster's Ball" did for Halle Berry or "Monster" for Charlize Theron.
Shannon (reprising his role from the London and New York stage productions) is eerily intense as the man whose madness proves contagious, while Connick exudes menace as the volatile Jerry. The abrupt, genre-defying ending hits like a slap in the face.
"Bug" will leave your head ringing.
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