Bug (R, 2007)

Be it the fear that someone is lurking behind you in a dark parking lot or a bug is crawling on you while you sleep, there is a bit of paranoia in us all.Bug is not some cheap fright fest that trivializes its characters and depends on extra-terrestrial bugs to drive the film’s suspense. it's all about the paranoia and the characters that endure it.Agnes White (Ashley Judd) is an alcoholic drug-user whose abusive ex-con, ex-husband just got out of jail and comes back to her, mostly for cash. At the same time, she meets the soft-spoken Peter Evans (Michael Shannon) who genuinely likes her. While pushing away from her ex-husband, she pulls herself closer to Peter, despite his seemingly unbelievable past and present circumstances. The power of Bug lies within its characters. We naturally hope the best for Agnes, though extremely flawed and consumed by despair after the loss of her son. Peter seems to have the potential to have a positive impact on her life.Though their actions are mostly confined to Agnes’ hotel room, the people involved are dynamic. Agnes shares her experience of loss in telling the story of her son’s disappearance. Peter comforts her and adds a hint of bizarre fascination with his ideas of technology . When the bugs finally arrive, we have already been drawn into their world, we trust them, and it makes the film all the more devastating. Bug is a cautionary chamber piece of trusting love and endless drug use, while the majority of audience will want to see Ashley Judd ripping the “bugs” out of her skin. Predetermined expectations of what the film will be, sight unseen, destroys Bug’s chances of finding its audience based purely on our reliance on marketing. The film makes no concessions for closed-minded viewers, who will ultimately dismiss the film as boring. William Friedkin’s directing is patient and cerebral. Through his use of symbolic motifs, most notably the distant sound of a helicopter and the saturation of hot and cold temperatures, he plays on our genre expectations. Most of all, Friedkin is patient. He grows his character’s paranoia as he grows our own. He plants the seeds of trust from the very beginning and betrays it; in a sense, bringing us closer to Agnes by having us endure her very same emotional journey. It’s unfortunate that an excellent film will be shrugged off and forgotten before it has a chance. The marketing machine of Hollywood has played to the horror audience’s blood lust. Once it has betrayed that audiences trust by not delivering what it promised in its trailers, Bug will quietly leak out of theaters and onto video to be archived as a one-trick pony Perhaps the programmed cybernetics paranoia found in Bug isn’t too far off, in that we are already programmed into accepting common cinematic formulas and predictable franchises. if you would like to discuss opinions about this movie leave me a comment.

just a tip to anyone who may be interested in seeing the movie "bug", DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY OR TIME, this was with out a doubt one of the worst movies i have ever seen. horrible cinematography, slow, terrible plot.....if there was one. and it seemed as if it would never end. DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE

This movie was so bad i did not even finish it. I was very disappointed that Ashley Judd is in this movie.