Bug is a different kind of woman-in-peril movie starring Ashley Judd, which has long been its own specific genre. Judd is indeed in peril here once again, following Kiss the Girls and Twisted and the like, but she gets to prove she can actually act with some depth, and not just look pretty under strain. Whatever unexpected ability she shows in the early scenes of this paranoid thriller go utterly to waste, however, as the film spirals ridiculously out of control by the end.
Bug comes from veteran William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection), a director who has seen better days, decades ago. Friedkin still maintains a mastery of suspense for the first half or so, and Bug can be intriguing as a character study of two damaged people who find a whole new way to damage each other further. Until it just becomes silly, that is.
Judd stars as Agnes, a lonely waitress at a run-down bar who lives in an even rattier motel, subsisting on a diet of cigarettes, vodka and pot. Agnes' only friend is fellow waitress R.C.
(Lynn Collins), who is pretty and gay and who flirts with her and makes her feel loved, or at least vaguely wanted. Sporadically, Agnes' brutish ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr. as a believable bad guy) breezes in and abuses her physically and mentally.
But her pathetic life gets shaken up by a quiet drifter named Peter (Michael Shannon, whose presence and delivery are riveting), who hangs out at the bar one night.
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