Getting infested

Fear, paranoia and infestation abound in this skillful adaptation of Broadway play "Bug" from playwright (and screenplay adaptor) Tracy Letts. Director William Friedkin, who also directed "The Exorcist," provides the audience with all they need to know in the opening two shots of the film: The first is only about two seconds long and consists of a slain man laying in a room covered in tin foil. The second is an aerial shot of vast farmland with a tiny, rundown motel in the middle. As the camera descends on the motel, a transparent shot of a ceiling fan is superimposed onto the shot, and you hear helicopters. \nWithin the first two minutes of the film, the audience is alerted to the threatening nature of life in this motel -- of something bigger, of invasion. Friedkin's camera work is economical and intentional. Though this film reveals itself as a work for the stage in its reliance on symbol and focus on character rather than plot, Friedkin's fixation on images reveals the motifs central to his audience's understanding of this film.\nStructurally, "Bug" is a descent from reality to total paranoia, but it is also an ascent from isolation to union. This movement is executed with commitment and love by Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, an actor who garnered very favorable reviews for his work in the stage version. Judd plays the lonely and ordinary Agnes White, a trailer-trash resident of Rustic Motel in the farmlands of Oklahoma whose room becomes infested; and Shannon portrays Peter Evans, the unsuspecting friend of a friend who Agnes takes in to stave off loneliness. His paranoid worldview fills the voids in Agnes' empty life.\nThis film is scary. The depths of delusion the human mind can reach and the consequences thereof are terrifying. But "Bug" is less about scaring and more about deception and truth, the vulnerability of loneliness and how paranoia is an infestation.\nThe special features are OK. Friedkin's commentary oscillates between insight and plot retelling. There is a conversation with Friedkin about the film industry and the way it has evolved since the 1960s. There is also a little feature called "Bug: An Introduction" in which the cast gushes about Letts' play, the film and the characters; but that's not to say it isn't fun to watch.