Average Rating: 6.2/10
Reviews Counted: 131
Fresh: 80 | Rotten: 51
Disappointing resolution aside, Bug uses its claustrophobic setting and cinéma vérité camerawork to tense, impressive effect.
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Critic Reviews: 37
Fresh: 24 | Rotten: 13
Disappointing resolution aside, Bug uses its claustrophobic setting and cinéma vérité camerawork to tense, impressive effect.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.5/5
User Ratings: 352,742
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
Sep 25, 2006 Wide
Sep 25, 2007
$7.0M
Lionsgate Films
All Critics (134) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (82) | Rotten (53) | DVD (14)
Beat by beat, Bug is gripping: It has that feverish compression of great theater, but director William Friedkin gets inside it, so it's never stagy.
A film of excruciating intensity, a psychodrama that infects the imagination.
This is a movie about the dangers of letting love rob you of your reason and cut you off from the world, and, bugs in the bloodstream or not, who hasn't been there?
Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon (who reprises his stage persona) never allow us to categorize the main characters as one-dimensional nut jobs but two emotionally fractured souls who retreat into paranoid delusion.
Bug won't get under your skin as much as it will assault you with its ghastly claustrophobic drama and over-the-top performances.
The cheesy soundtrack and the lacklustre acting undermine [director Friedkin's] efforts at turning an intelligent play into a scary movie.
Claustrophobic paranoia provides the squishy center of Tracy Letts's Off Broadway play, Friedkin swims in it
Paranoid horror/thriller is too intense for kids.
While not really a "horror" film, "Bug" contains more weirdness, tension and suspense than most other "genre" releases last year.
Letts' story is ultimately an extreme cautionary tale about how a little bit of passion can make you do magnificently fucked-up things.
Before it completely goes off the rails in its final 20 minutes, Bug generally comes off as a slow-moving yet exceedingly well-acted drama...
It starts off like a horror film, or like a modern-day Tennessee Williams piece and then transmutes into ... something very different indeed.
The dialogue raises the odd snigger and the final act is perhaps a little too barmy, but a committed cast and an experienced director make this a tense and effectively claustrophobic experience.
Thanks to Friedkin's devilish direction, and Letts's unrelenting, sharp, sad and darkly comic writing, Bug will keep you guessing till the bloody end.
Melodramati%u010Dni, isforsirani i predvidljivi zavr%u0161etak
The audience is likely to be left scratching their heads, and that wouldn't be from insect bites brought on by this film's extremely unpleasant subject matter.
I think the misconception that people have with Bug is that they expected a straight forward horror film. Well, Bug is most certainly that, and more. After viewing it, I realized it had other genre elements such as drama, thriller and psychological mixed with body horror. At least, that's what I thought of the film.
October 22, 2011
Super Reviewer
An unhinged film based on an unhinged play, "Bug" is paranoia gone wild. "Bug" gives Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd lots of occasion to play crazy - and they rise to the occasion. Judd is a surprise, she may not have Award-winning chops, but she proves with "Bug" that she can elevate her acting above
July 25, 2010
Super Reviewer
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