Cinema review
Directed by William Friedkin
Starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.
Release date 9 November 2007

Agnes is haunted by the disappearance of her son in a supermarket. Later, she meets a paranoid man named Peter who seems to be hiding something…

William Friedkin emerges as the true star of Bug, delivering a strong director’s film that successfully adapts Tracy Letts’s off-Broadway curiosity about trailer trash folk dealing with powerful feelings of paranoia.

The strong sense of claustrophobia is one of the film’s most essential and expertly realised elements. Friedkin wisely keeps his adaptation simple and theatrical, using oppressive close-ups to highlight the intense performances and keeping flashy cinematic techniques to a minimum. Letts's dense script metes out the sense of insanity in increasing doses over the course of the narrative that gives the piece a hallucinatory edge.

The film contains some career-best performances. Harry Connick Jr. is virtually unrecognisable as Agnes's brutal and sadistic ex, turning up unannounced after two years in stir. And Ashley Judd delivers a dark and complex performance that is almost exhausting to watch.

Bug is a horrific and deeply disturbing film that demands much from its audience. It will certainly struggle to find an audience because it is so hard to define. But as a genre-busting thriller with overtones of deep psychological horror it is, at the very least, an interesting and risky film from one of the most consistently underrated directors working today. Jonathan Wilkins

VERDICT: 7/10
An intense and intriguing psychological horror movie.