Bug [Special Edition]

Director: William Friedkin William Friedkin

Overview

Academy Award-winning Exorcist director William Friedkin scuttles deep into the darkest recesses of the traumatized human psyche with this tale of a lonely bartender haunted by the long-ago disappearance of her young son, and the paranoia that emerges when she enters into a tentative relationship with a deeply disturbed drifter. Adapted from the off-Broadway play by Tracy Letts, Bug centers on Agnes (Ashley Judd), who tends bar alongside pal R.C. (Lynn Collins), and has recently moved into a shoddy roadside motel in hopes of avoiding her menacing and recently paroled ex-husband, Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.). Upon making the acquaintance of subdued former soldier Peter (Michael Shannon, repeating his stage role), a veteran of the first Gulf War, Agnes finally senses that things are looking up. Quietly charming despite his melancholy aura, Peter soon reveals to Agnes that he contracted a "bug" while serving in the Middle East, and that it may have been deliberately administered as part of a secret military medical experiment. Convinced that the microscopic insects are quickly multiplying just under the surface of his skin and that they have now infected Agnes as well, Peter soon descends into a psychotic rage as he resorts to increasingly desperate measures to purge himself of the offending subdermal arthropods.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/25/2007
UPC:	0031398218012
Original Release:	2006
Rating:	R
Source:	LIONSGATE - 600000-AEC LGE
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:41:00
Sales rank:	33,227

Special Features

Bug: An introduction ; A discussion with William Friedkin; Audio commentary by director William Friedkin; 16x9 widescreen; 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital audio; English and Spanish subtitles

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Ashley Judd	Agnes White
Michael Shannon	Peter Evans
Harry Connick Jr.	Jerry Goss
Lynn Collins	R.C.
Bob Neill	Pizza Harris
Brían F. O'Byrne	Dr. Sweet
Neil Bergeron	Man in Grocery Store
Harry Connick	Actor
Brian Tyler	Composer

Technical Credits

Tracy Letts

William Friedkin	Director
Tracy Letts	Screenwriter
Malcolm Petal	Producer,Executive Producer
Michael Burns	Producer
Gary Huckabay	Producer
Holly Wiersma	Producer
Kimberly C. Anderson	Producer,Executive Producer
David Nami	Special Effects
Bonnie Timmermann	Casting
Andreas Schardt	Producer
Andreas Scharct	Producer
Michael Ohoven	Executive Producer,Producer
Jim Seibel	Executive Producer
Jeffrey Haupt	Sound/Sound Designer
Steve Boeddeker	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Horror fans must have been geeked for William Friedkin's return to the genre he helped shape with the seminal 1973 devil possession classic The Exorcist. What may have left some of them cold, and inspired the mixed reaction to Bug, was that this time around, the scary bits are not of the corporeal variety, but more psychological. And rarely has psychological breakdown been wrought so intensely as inside this motel room, where two paranoids (Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd) descend into the mouth of their personal madness. Judd in particular is astonishing, both during her more pensive earlier moments, and in the streams of terrifying babble her henpecked mind produces later on. In some of the most mature work of her career, she might have earned consideration for year-end awards had the film been better received and less stigmatized by its genre. Shannon is the indispensable other half of this mutually destructive pair, spittle flying wildly from his raving mouth. They feed off each other in frightening ways. What's really remarkable is the different moods Friedkin hits. For a long stretch, Bug is a melancholy character piece exploring the miseries of blue-collar life, as Judd's bartender steers clear of an abusive ex (Harry Connick Jr.) and mourns a disappeared child. The film's dramatic change in purpose may inspire criticism that it's uneven or ill-conceived, but the beginning necessarily establishes how these characters' problems are grounded in the real world -- and makes their eventual untethering from that world all the more stark. As the tight staging indicates, Bug began its life as a play (with Shannon as its star). But Friedkin uses his camera as a uniquely cinematic tool, immersing his audience in a claustrophobia they could never experience so intimately while sitting at a fixed distance from the stage.