Film

It’s a real shame that this taut, expertly played and satisfyingly outré horror yarn directed by William Friedkin has been nervously shuffled onto the big screen in what seems like a stop-gap prelude to its (hopefully richer) life on DVD. An adaptation of an off-Broadway chamber piece by American playwright Tracey Letts, the bulk of the drama takes place in a seedy roadside motel which is the home of dowdy southern divorcee Agnes (Ashley Judd, delivering a uncharacteristically fiery central performance). She hooks up with the cagey, but outwardly docile, Peter (Michael Shannon) who, after consummating the relationship, decides to share with her a strange and life-altering little secret.

While ‘Bug’ works well as gruelling claustrophobia, it’s also interesting in that it is a film in which (like ‘The Exorcist’ before it) the threat is solely internal as opposed to external. The huge popularity of the ‘Saw’ franchise (essentially a 90-minute gore montage), makes it an even bigger tragedy that quality genre films like this – horror with a heart, if you will – have been allowed to drift off into the ether.