On the anniversary of Friedkin’s extremely underrated psychological nightmare, we look at why ‘Bug’ is still a classic 11 years later!
“Bug problem?”
“You should know.”
When a horror film is working, its audience will actually feel like they’re in danger. They’re not just getting frightened in the moment, the characters’ fear becomes the audience’s and they get lost in the experience. William Friedkin’s Bug is a film that not only makes you feel its characters’ fear, but also every gross, uncomfortable impulse that they go through. Few films get under your skin as effectively as Bug does. It’s a movie that makes you feel like you need to take a shower after the credits roll. It’s not easy for a film to so thoroughly creep out its audience while simultaneously making them think and question what they know, yet Bug is a masterpiece that seems to seldomly come up in the discussion of great psychological horror. The honest truth is that the film connects so hard that it deserves to be brought up in the same conversation as another little horror film that Friedkin directed, The Exorcist—maybe you’ve heard of it? With Friedkin’s psychological shocker turning 11 today, it seems like a prime opportunity to dig into why Bug is mandatory horror viewing.
Bug depicts a stunning downward spiral between a drug addict, Agnes (Ashley Judd), and a war vet suffering from schizophrenia, Peter (Michael Shannon), that highlights how powerful a delusion can become when you’ve got someone else to help feed the fear. It’s a film that perfectly establishes the feeling of mounting paranoia to the point of it becoming unbearable. You will literally feel dirty from watching this movie, that’s how strong its atmosphere is. The whole thing is also an incredibly claustrophobic endeavor, with the film nearly entirely taking place within a seedy motel room. The space is already cramped, but the paranoid minds of Peter and Agnes manage to keep making the walls come in closer and closer around them. The film sees them initially freaking out over bugs, but it’s not a long stretch of time until a full-blown government conspiracy is underway.
This might be the perfect recipe for some of the best psychological horror that you’ll come across, however many people, Friedkin included, insist that Bug’s not an entry in the horror genre. While the horror connection is obviously clear and not unwarranted, it’s fascinating to hear that Friedkin actually thinks of the film as being “in many ways, a black comedy love story.” He also speaks of how film marketing is always eager to slot something into a genre and that Bug is really a film that fights that urge and is hard to classify. That being said, it’s this tendency that leads to the film so often being considered a horror, even if the full picture being offered here is much more layered and complicated. Bug still ends up evoking just as much dread, tension, and fear as any classic horror film. The fact that literal ghosts, monsters, or even outside antagonists aren’t a part of the story just acts as a testament to the strength of the material. The enemy and monster here are their minds and the film perfectly takes you through the decaying wormhole of their psychosis as they try to get out—but inevitably only get deeper—in this mental quicksand.
The motel room that Bug spends most of its time in is broken up into a bathroom, living room, and kitchenette, which are all interconnected in the tiny space. In spite of this claustrophobic nature, one of the first shots of the film is an extreme overhead shot from a helicopter (or maybe a surveillance satellite…) that renders the entire motel to a pinprick as outside interference seeps into the audio. In spite of this being a very low-scale story, this stylish beginning hints at the paranoid, surveillance angle that takes over the film. The film also wisely decides to start off by showing the audience the bizarre end scenario first—a dead Dr. Sweet in a decked-out motel room. It’s such a bizarre visual that it almost doesn’t register as a glimpse of what’s to come. How could things ever get to this point? This same shot is also repeated as a post-credits sequence, effectively book-ending the film with this marker of Peter’s trauma.
Peter’s trauma might be a tremendous influence in the film, but it’s not as if Agnes is totally on stable ground before he shows up. Agnes receives a flurry of phone calls early on that have no one of the other side of the line. It’s not something that plays as suspicious at first, but it becomes an increasingly dominant presence until it can no longer be ignored. But with deeper examination, it’s also highly probable that Agnes is imagining the whole thing and there are no phone calls. When she eventually confronts Jerry, her ex,, over harassing her, he denies ever calling. On top of that, the telephone light never lights up during any of the calls that Agnes receives. Plus, the only other person to hear the phone going off is Peter, after he and Agnes have sex (a sensually filmed sequence that slowly reveals a disturbing underbelly as bugs begin to invade the footage of bodies intermingling and becoming one). When viewing things through this lens it appears that Agnes is already unhinged and attempting to escape reality before she even comes in contact with Peter.
This phone conversation also acts as a strong introduction for Judd’s work as Agnes. Here she continually repeats the same gesture—answering a phone—but each time she reveals more about herself and what’s going on in her head at the moment. The entire film benefits from micro-gestures and economical displays of emotion, but it’s present right from the film’s opening lines. Agnes is yelling at “Jerry” during these phone calls, but they just as easily could be a manifestation of her wanting her missing child to return. They could be glimpses of fear regarding her now-loose husband, or pangs of guilt over losing her child. All of this through a one-sided phone call. A similar sensation is felt early on when Agnes suspiciously examines a flier on her car’s windshield. The whole scenario is entirely ordinary, yet Agnes fixates on the fact that no other cars have fliers on them and turns it into something more sinister.
This is also illustrated well with the simple scene where Peter hears a noise and Agnes deduces that it must be a cricket. The two scour the apartment trying to find the culprit, but this innocent action (which leads them to the smoke detector) ends up being the first sign of their shared delusion and how they begin to rub off on each other. It’s not long after this that Peter begins waxing about the dangerous radioactive materials found inside smoke detectors that Agnes is already buying into it and supporting his psychosis. “No wonder I feel so lousy all the time,” she tells him in commiseration. It’s a scene that is extrapolated on in much greater detail after Peter and Agnes have sex and he becomes determined to track all of the missing aphids that are plaguing the two of them. They’re connected through both body and mind now. Similarly, once Peter finally reveals to Agnes what the military has done to him, the motel room begins violently shaking as if it’s under attack. Nothing is actually happening at this moment, but as Agnes accepts Peter and absorbs his delusion, they’re both pulled into this world of paranoia and there’s no turning back. The film uses its first half hour to set the stage with all of this and to really get moving, but after that it truly flies off the rails and takes the viewer along with it.
The idea of Peter and Agnes sharing a delusion has been discussed, but what this film is really exploring is the psychological concept of folie à deux. Folie à deux is more or less the idea of “contagious schizophrenia” and how delusions can grow when they’ve got other susceptible people to feed off of. There’s aptly an X-Files episode that’s titled after the condition that happens to see Mulder and Scully dealing with imaginary bugs. In a lot of ways this amounts to Bug being a film about post-traumatic stress and trying to cope with trauma. The film begins with Agnes already traumatized and broken after the disappearance of her son, Lloyd. Her lifestyle appears to be fairly reckless and doesn’t consist of much more than drinking and smoking crack. She was also plagued with an abusive husband who’s now out of jail and threatening to move back in with her, which triggers her in a number of ways. Agnes’ life has grown to be so terrible that it surely seems like the perfect time to escape reality and run away into this delusion that Peter presents to her.
There are a number of references throughout the film where the loss of Agnes’ child is presented as the key connective tissue to Peter and his tendency to unspool. Agnes is literally swaddling Peter like a baby in a blanket in one scene while she screams about no one taking “the one thing in the world” away from her. Also, when Agnes first meets Peter, the following exchange occurs: “You a con?” “No, ma’am.” “Hell, don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ Makes me feel like your mom.” Agnes is continually looking for relief over the loss of her son and Peter helps her achieve this, just like Agnes helps Peter feed his own delusions.
The final lines of the film are even a deeply touching exchange of “I love you”s between Peter and Agnes before giving into paranoia and lighting themselves on fire. In spite of all of this fear and danger, these two are still able to form a connection and find love—even if that might be what seals their fate in the end. They’re both still able to find someone else who believes them. They might not be able to beat the impossibly stacked odds that they’ve created in their minds, but the fact that they can find support and belief in someone else is enough to be a “happy ending” in their eyes.
There are also some choice scenes featured over the end credits of the film which seem to act as the markers of Agnes and Peter’s trauma: Agnes in the form of her missing child and the stress of her abusive husband (the clip of Lloyd’s toys now plays with the added touch of a ringing phone, signifying Jerry’s presence), and Peter with his war trauma and paranoia regarding Dr. Sweet.
While the heady mental trip that Bug provides is plenty reason to love it, the film’s look and aesthetic is also truly remarkable. Production design and set decoration go above and beyond here to depict Agnes and Peter’s motel room slowly transforming and becoming a manifestation of their delusions. At first it’s just several dozen fly strips adorning the room, but then aluminum foil and bug zappers begin to go up and by the end of the film there’s not an inch of un-foiled space left. The zappers cast everything in an eerie blue light that makes the images you’re seeing seem increasingly unreal. Furthermore, Friedkin turns to handheld, jittery, unstable camerawork to reflect the chaotic, messy mental state of these characters. The scenes at the lesbian bar or the liquor store before the madness really sets in are shot uniformly with stationary set-ups. Things are in control here. However, once the motel is reached, Agnes and Peter’s mental states become so erratic, it even ends up infecting the camerawork and how the story is being framed.
Another reason to get excited about Bug is the acting, with Judd and Shannon both delivering career-making performances, but Shannon truly embodies Peter Evans. He’s just so good in this, right from his awkward first line of, which he repeats three times, three different ways, until his non-axe murderer status is solidified to Agnes. Later on when he’s practically convulsing from all of the bugs that are “in” him, it’s a sight to behold. Another frantic scene sees him using a child’s microscope to analyze his blood (and later pizza) for bugs and he’s never seemed so crazy. Shannon’s career is full of incredible performances, but few seem as frenetic and important to the actor as the work that he’s doing here. By the time he’s without hesitation in order to get to “insect egg sacs implanted under fillings,” it’s hard to remember the Peter in the calmer state that originally comes to Agnes. The following aftermath where he attempts to destroy and examine his tooth is not only a masterclass in acting, but also sure to make most viewers light-headed.
It’s worth noting that Bug originated as a stage play by Tracey Letts (Letts and Friedkin would also collaborate on Killer Joe, which is also very worth your time) and Michael Shannon regularly performed the role of Peter before it was turned into a film. His experience in the role is why he’s so damn good in this, but it’s also why the dialogue feels so improvisational and genuine at times, too. It’s meant to evoke a theatrical quality of just watching two people getting to know each other and Shannon’s experienced enough with the material to know exactly how to take it to these places. On top of that, Friedkin was allegedly so proficient and sure of what he was doing here, the actors would sometimes need to beg for him to do a second take of a scene. Friedkin knew what he wanted so well and was sure that they were perfectly embodying their scenes.
Bug is also smart to root all of Peter’s crazy conspiracy theories in fact and give them some basis in reality. It’s beneficial that he’s not just raving about truly insane nonsense (although he reaches this point). The fact that this paranoia has a context and reference point instantly groups Peter with other like-minded conspiracy theorists rather than someone that’s truly on another level. At the same time, audiences are more inclined to buy into Peter’s theories if they happen to be rooted in real conspiracies. Part of the fun of Bug is not knowing what you should believe. The fact that it tries to ground Peter’s rantings in reality—as heightened as it may be—continues to obscure what the truth of this film is.
Off of this, it’s shocking to see how much Bug trusts its audience while not spoon-feeding them information. A brief shot of a shopping cart with child-like noises bleeding into the soundtrack is the first piece of evidence that Agnes has lost a child. A similarly subtle effect is used regarding Peter’s condition. He watches the motel fan oscillate above him as he briefly hears the sounds of a helicopter. It’s an incredibly minimalistic way of telling the audience that Peter is a veteran from the Gulf War. Bug is a film that’s not about these characters’ traumas, but rather how those traumas manifest themselves and warp people. A less confident film would give viewers far too much information about Peter and Agnes’ pasts. The way that Bug presents all of this allows the audience to see the damage that led up to all of this, or to just accept the crazier narrative that’s being pushed forward and ignore all of symptoms. Both of these varied interpretations are possible.
It’s also nice to see how the film allows audiences to get lost in its timeline. As the narrative begins to get crazier and Peter and Agnes are increasingly losing touch, it becomes that much more difficult to determine just how much time is passing. It’s a disorienting experience that keeps pushing forth startling new realities that have the audience feeling like they’ve lost control. Their concept of how much time has passed is just as broken as Peter and Agnes’.
All of this behavior culminates in one of the film’s most sobering scenes. Peter and Agnes have their friend RC over and she plays the oblivious one as they continue to dive down the rabbit hole. Peter monologues about the dangers “of coke bugs” and how the parasites in their blood are actually feeding on them. It’s almost painful to watch him throwing away Agnes’ medicine as the two of them continue to develop rashes and spots over how they’ve been experimenting on each other. RC is very much the voice of reason through the scene, but it’s no use. She’s lost in the echo chamber of paranoia that Peter and Agnes are carefully crafting with fly strips and aluminum foil.
It’s a small scene, but even Agnes briefly checking in with a Magic 8-Ball corroborates the idea of what’s truth and what’s fiction being up for debate here. The 8-Ball slyly shows Agnes the message: BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW. Even this prophetic device can’t help Agnes decipher what’s reality. The film’s final scene embraces this concept as Peter and Agnes systematically turn everything that’s happened to them into another facet of their . It’s a bewildering and scary to see how quickly they build and accept this new reality around them. It’s painful to watch these two people devolve so much and prop themselves up on these delusions. After so much pain though, this twisted reality is able to make them feel whole and at peace. That’s not the easiest narrative to sell people on, but Bug ushers it in like it’s the ending of Casablanca.
In a time where cinema is being drowned in a flood of sequels, remakes, and connected universes, why not just brush up with this classic and let it work its magic over you? Few films so elegantly achieve what they set out to do, with Bug being a truly effective depiction of a mind in the process of snapping. I’m going to need to end this here though. Something’s been biting me the entire time I’ve been writing this. I can feel them.
I think I might be infested…
