October gives me a reason to watch an unreasonable amount of horror flicks without coming off TOO creepy.  And since I plan on watching A LOT of horror movies this month, I figured I might as well post some reviews of them to add a little value to the whole experience.

Last night, my wife and I watched a farily new release called “Bug” starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick Jr.  Ashley Judd plays the role of Agnes, a bi-sexual waitress at a gay club in Oklahoma (they have those there? Who woulda thunk it?)  She is a lonely woman living in a run down hotel and trying to forget about the loss of her 6 year old son, 10 years earlier.  She’s a heavy drinker, smokes a lot of pot, and likes to snort the occasional line here and there.  Oh, and she looks like Oklahoma has a shortage on shampoo and conditioner. Greasy doesn’t begin to describe that nappy nest on her head.

A friend of Agnes from the bar introduces her to an odd loner, played by Michael Shannon, who they party with and who she lets stay the night at her house.  This is the point in the movie where I got lost. 

One of the most important parts of film-making is creating at least one central character that the audience can relate to, this is especially important in horror films as we need to feel vulnerable, as if, “this could happen to me.”  BUG totally fails in this regard.  No decision that Agnes makes in this film make any sense what-so-ever.  One minute she is saying that the drifter looks and acts like an ax murderer, and the next she’s letting him sleep on her couch, five feet from her bed.  Okay, we have to allow for a little suspension of disbelief in movies.  Can we forgive this moment of crazy and just flow with the story?  No, not really, because by the end, this will be one of the sanest decisions she makes.

Bug is ultimately a psychological thriller.  The only reason it has been labeled horror is because of the gore that comes in the second half.  It turns out that the drifter, by his account, is a war vet who was experimented on by the government.  He insists that his body is loaded up with menacing little bugs, aphids to be exact, that transmit messages to the government.  His solution for taking care of the bugs is to dig them out of his skin with his nails, knives, needles, and at one particularly disturbing moment, out of his teeth with a plyer.  Eeeww!

Agnes likes the drifter.  She likes him a lot.  They make love (really sweaty, greasy, slimy love) and something happens that we never truly understand.  As soon as they they’re done, Agnes catches the crazy.  By the end of the film you’re left to wonder what made her crazy, and the most reasonable answer is that she was just lonely and that this drifter had become important enough to her that she gets as crazy as he is, but by damn if the movie doesn’t try to make you think she caught some sort of Paranoid-Schizophrenic-STD.  These two go bat shit crazy together.  By the end they are living in a tin-foil covered room with bug zappers hanging all around them.

BUG is an acting tour-de-force for Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon.  I have to give them a lot of credit for their performance as they fall further into the rabbit hole.  However, I wasn’t able to fall down that hole with them.  The film does a poor job of allowing the viewer a chance to RELATE to Agnes, so when her sanity spirals out of control we don’t feel threatened by it, we just think its insane.  Because of this, I simply can not recommend this title.  It is based on a play of the same name, and that is apparent as the vast bulk of the 102 minute running time is spent in one room.  This means that all of your focus is centered on the characters and their ride into madness, but since those characters were unbelievable to start, the ride feels broken.

All in all, I give this movie 2 ships on a 5 ship scale.  Sail on, little buggy.  Sail on.