Bed Bug

On Memorial Day I decided that I wanted to see a scary movie. It had been quite a while since I had seen one, and I enjoy the Sci Fi/Horror movie genre. I’m not a fan of chainsaw-massacre-type flicks. My favorites are haunted house films such as The Haunting with Julie Harris, really good monster films such as Alien, or deadly virus films such as The Andromeda Strain. Although good films in the Sci Fi/Horror genre are hard to come by, I’m always willing to give a scary movie a chance.

So on Memorial Day, I decided to go see Bug. The trailer on TV had caught my eye. I saw it starred Ashley Judd and appeared to be about a bug invasion of some kind. I like Judd; I like scary bugs (Them made in 1954 is one of the great ones!). I also had a vague memory of Bug receiving very good reviews.

I entered the theater with a feeling that this movie was going to be good. I sat back in my cushioned seat and watched with a handful of others the movie open with the camera zooming down on top of the Rustic Motel — an isolated, run-down motor court on a barren Oklahoma highway. There in Room 7 we meet Agnes, Judd’s character, who is being made nervous and edgy by the harassment of a silent phone caller. Each time the phone rings, Agnes shouts her fear into the phone, and we learn she is afraid of someone who just “got out.” That someone turns out to be her abusive, recently paroled ex-husband, Jerry (Harry Connick, Jr.).

But, before we have a chance to see Jerry in the flesh, we get to meet Peter (Michael Shannon), a shy, somewhat odd drifter, introduced to Agnes by her lesbian friend and fellow waitress, R.C. (Lynn Collins). R.C. picks up drifter Peter at the local bar and brings him to Room 7 to meet Agnes. They all party together with alcohol and drugs.

To make a long story short, boy Peter meets girl Agnes, boy spends the night on girl’s floor, boy leaves to get breakfast for girl, boy interrupts ex-husband beating girl, boy gently gets girl to reveal her tragic secret, boy sleeps with girl, boy finds an aphid in their bed.

Ah, here’s our first critter. Surely the monster swarm will follow. Unfortunately for me, right after the first sighting it becomes apparent that there will be no monster swarm of “aphids” or any other kind of bug in the tradition of monster flicks. Peter is just flat out mad, and he spends the rest of the movie drawing emotionally fragile Agnes into his madness, from first persuading Agnes that there really are aphids in her bed to convincing her that he is AWOL from the military because the government implanted him with insect egg sacs transmitting locater signals. Afraid of losing him, Agnes isolates herself in a foiled wrapped room (foil interrupts the signals) to protect him from capture. R.C. makes a valiant effort to rescue Agnes, and even wife-beater Jerry tries to free her but is too late. By then Peter and Agnes are locked in a bloody dance of delusion and paranoia, from cutting flesh and extracting teeth to much, much worse. At the climax of the movie, both characters, drenched in blood, are frenzied with their shared delusion of insect infestation. The movie closes with Peter and Agnes ending their affliction in a less bloody but equally brutal fashion.

Bug is listed as a horror movie, and I’ve read it described as a psychological thriller with subtle twists. It is more a psychological study than a horror film or even thriller, although it certainly is bloody in the horror tradition. While Judd and Shannon give intense performances as characters mutually feeding their delusions, there are no surprises in the film — no subtlety. With the “appearance” of the first aphid, we know that Peter is mad, and we know that Judd will soon be joining him. As I sat through the film, I never once questioned Peter’s insanity. In the Vampire’s Kiss with Nicholas Cage, we find ourselves wondering whether Cage is really a vampire or merely an insane young man thinking he is a vampire. I never doubted that Peter and Agnes were nuts, and I didn’t particularly enjoy watching their predictable descent.

For me a horror film must scare, thrill, or at the very least surprise you. A lot of blood does not make a horror film. When some fellow audience members snickered at Judd during a climactic monologue, I knew I wasn’t the only one with different expectations.