BUG, 2006 (Grade C+)

 Director  William Friedkin
Awards? none that I know of as a film --but the Play may have won some
Cast: Ashley Judd; Lynn Collins; Harry Connick Jr., Brian F O'Byrne, Michael Shannon


Story line: this is a screenplay based on a play by Tracy Letts: It is a claustrophobic thriller that takes place in a small motel type apartment. It tells how an unstable man (Michael Shannon) conveniences a very needy woman (Ashley Judd) that the government is implanting insects in its citizens.The real question is, is Shannon's character sane--is what he is saying true, How can we tell for sure?  Is his is a paranoid fantasy- or a cry against a dystopia.

sez says:  We originally saw this on stage. It works wonderfully well as live theater..  Scott Coopwood played the role on stage that Harry Connick Jr plays in the movie. Coopwood brought dread into the room just by walking on stage.  Connick did a stand up job as an unpredictable and violent ex-husband--but Coopwood made you understand that Judd's character already had one foot in the nut-house before her new love-interest, Shannon, wonders into her life.

What are we willing to believe in order to not be left alone?  What are we cabable of doing to have and to keep another person in our life? Judd's character is a lonely older woman (she is suppose to be in her 40s--not so in the movie) and she has suffered terrible loss (a dozen year earlier her child disappear never again to be found). She is not doing well--but she gets by on the margins.  Enter a young stranger.  He finds her attractive and makes love to her. This is happening at the same time that her violent, ex-husband has been released from prison and is menacing her. She is happy to bring this new young maninto her life.

Then the new lover begins to tell her his story and his secrets: Bugs are everywhere, they have even been implanted in your body and you must get them out (Michael Shannon did this character on stage all over the country and his rendition is very well developed)    She/Judd gets pulled into his reality with apparently horrifying results.  BUT-there is always the possibility that what he is saying is true. The story moves along giving you hints of information that might prove his reality to be true--or prove ti false. But it never tells you which it is.  And that is the magic of this tale -- becasue we, the audience, have to decide. Can we tell the difference between a crazed nutcase and someone desperately trying to tell us an awful truth?  The story leaves just enough room for either to be the case..and it never tells us what is real.   In the end we are given no clear answer-but we sure know something is dreadfully wrong.  The question is: What is real and what isn't?

The movie plays heavily toward this being a descent into madness--the play works better, leaving the question to be answered by the audience--as unsettling as that is.   (Movie Grade C+, the Play was a B+)