I have never finished watching this film, and I have forgotten most of what I saw, so hopefully, this is good.
A room lit in blue, a guy laying there, looking dead, and we roll the credits. OK. Not ominous at all.
We zoom in on the Rustic Motel. It looks like every other motel in the middle of bumfuck. Our lead girl Agnes, played by Ashley Judd, gets a phone call and nobody is saying anything but keeps asking if it’s Jerry and calling him a son of a bitch. She is in a white tank, some cut off jean shorts, and looking adequate in her motel room. It appears that she has been living there, and drinking a lot. The phone rings again, she picks up and says “Jerry, fuck you” and hangs up, pours some wine, lights up a cigarette. The phone rings again, she says something about him getting out and she says that she has a gun. This Jerry guy sounds like a winner. The phone rings again. Is this Scream? She lets it just ring.
The next day, she has a flyer on her windshield, but nobody else does. Suspicious. She goes grocery shopping and is enjoying the booze section. She goes into a daze. We are this honkey tonk bar, and Agnes is a waitress. They are in Oklahoma, just getting that out of the way. This lesbian co-worker (R.C.)of hers wants to introduce her to somebody. They are back at her place, some dude, RC, and Agnes are partying, doing drugs. I think the dude’s name is Peter. He is saying how pretty Agnes is. RC has to bounce and kisses RC goodbye a couple of times. Peter is staying. This guy is a creeper. He says that he would like to see her again, just looking for a friend. I like Peter for his awkwardness.
They go back inside and he hears something. It sounds like a cricket. So now they are cricket hunting, but she says it’s back luck to kill them. It’s actually the smoke alarm. So they break it down via a magic 8 Ball. He goes outside to toss away the smoke alarm, she is peeing with the door open. She offers to let him sleep on the couch. He has on a truly ugly nightgown, and he has a toothache. He wakes up, asks if it’s ok to sleep on the floor. Everybody just staring at the ceiling fan. Annnnd the next day.
She wakes up to the shower running and the door closed. She gets some coffee, and out he comes, Jerry, not Peter. He is all pissy about her not visiting him. He wants something sweet to eat. Jerry is played by Harry Connick Jr. She tells him to get out and he just is ignoring that and talking about how he is staying in the most casual way. This is just back and forth about his past and who Peter was. She is sick of this, so she is just getting mouthy, so he backhands and asks who fault it is that she got slapped, she admits that it’s hers. This guy is a delight. Peter comes back. Peter’s full name is Peter Evans, like Evan Peters only reversed. So Jerry takes some of her money and pushes Peter out of the way and just strolls out of there like a champion. Peter takes care of her. Hey, Peter played General Zod in Man Of Steel. Peter is not a fan of Jerry. Peter is talking about how machines are happy that people know they are out there. We find out that she lost her son ina grocery store when he was 6 years old, never found him. She gives him the go-ahead to spend the night again. He says that he hasn’t been to bed with another woman in awhile, but he thinks he could with her. So she tells him to come to her. Giggity Giggity.
She’s an emotional trainwreck……who shows her tits. Alllllright. There is lots of insect imagery during the fucking. It wasn’t as sexy as it should have been. Peter wakes up a bug bite, and he is trying to find it. She gets up fully nude and goes to the bathroom. Nice little butt, not a sweet bubble butt though. They found the one little guy, and are looking for more. Alright, man bush as well. There you go, ladies. He says that it hasn’t been with a woman in a few years. He says that he was sick of bothering with them. Good for him. She likes his body and how talks. Man ass. What is this, FX? #FXHasTheManAss. He has people after him, and he is freaked out so he is gonna bounce and now she is trying to talk him into staying. He bounces, so she gets mad and starting crying because she is lonely. He comes back and explains that he got into some trouble with the army. They were giving some guys weird injections and sent him to a hospital, and they did tests on him. He went AWOL. He is worried if he has a disease or infection. That is the smallest bathroom door width wise. He says that he doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t want him to leave her, they embrace and a helicopter goes overhead and like fucks shit up in the room.
The next day, they have a ton of insect repellents, a ton of fly strips, Peter is looking at his blood under a microscope. What the hell. Of course, Jerry looks in at this. Jerry just breaks in and Peter scares him. He tells Jerry that Agnes is at the liquor store. Jerry used to drive a sausage truck and is pissed off that they don’t have a TV, and he is worried about not knowing if they are being invaded by aliens. Peter found a bug in his blood, and Jerry is just an oblivious pushy asshole. Peter says that he wants to stay, and so Peter needs to bounce, but Peter says that they are infested there, so not smart. Agnes is trying to throw Jerry out in the middle of his story. Jerry is just a douche and finally leaves. RC wants to call the cops on Jerry for violating his parole. Peter stops that due to being AWOL.
It is revealed that they went to a doctor, and he found no bugs, but gave her something for a rash. Peter is all kinds of nervous. Holy shit, Peter has a ton of awful bites and marks on his torso. RC says that there are no bugs. RC is threatening to tell Dr. Sweet, and Dr. Sweet is looking for Peter. RC wants to take Agnes to her place. Peter is flailing around like he is being attacked by multiple bugs. Peter is passed out. Agnes slaps RC for trying to take the one thing she has left in this life. I am so sorry, but this is hard to describe and keep with so much dialogue. RC bounces.
Peter is awake and talking to Agnes. She is covered in red spots. Peter surmises that the bugs came from him and not the motel. Peter thinks that there is a bug egg sack under his tooth filling and the military put it in him, henceforth the tooth pain and so he pulls his own damn tooth. He says that he hasn’t been captured by the military as they want to see how the experiment went. Now he looks at his tooth under the microscope. There are millions of mugs in there. Yup.
A dude shows up knocking at the door. I am guessing this to be Dr. Sweet, and he is looking for Peter. We see inside how the room is all lit up in blue, bug zappers, and everything is covered. The doctor says that he has only good intentions and leaves. Jerry breaks in with the doctor suddenly. He tells Jerry to wait outside. This place looks amazing, it is covered in aluminum foil. The foil is to break the bugs transmitting the signal. He tells her that he is a paranoid schizophrenic. He points out how silly it is that the military would just send a doctor if Peter was that important. So the doctor decides to get a hit off her pipe of whatever drug was in there.. He tells her that bugs are fairly common for delusional people. He asks her if she ever thought that the bugs weren’t a delusion. She shows him her arm. He asks her where the bugs came from. He suggests that if he takes Peter, then the bugs will leave too. She says that they will keep fighting it. There is another helicopter, and he tells her that they are being washed. He wants to help Peter take out the egg sacks, and she is afraid that “they” will take him away, but the doctor says that he wants to help him. Doc says that he was being used and didn’t know what “they” were using Peter for. He gives her his number and says that if he ends up with “them”, then he can’t vouch for Peter’s chances. She says that she can’t trust him. He says that he can help her find Lloyd, her missing son. She asks if he’s ok, and he nods yes. Hahaha, this is so silly. Peter emerges from the bathroom and holy hell, he looks bad.
He says that this is between Dr and Peter. She is pleading with Peter because she wants help finding her son. Dr looks to be getting read to jab a need in Peter, but Peter stabs him in the belly repeatedly and calls him a machine. Yeah, he has killed Dr. Peter is trying to convince her that he was a machine, a robot. He is batshit crazy. He is insisting that she has to listen to him. Oh boy, he talks about a meeting that took place where the powerful people me to decide all the important things. May of 1954, and they decided on how to maintain the status quo, keep rich getting richer, how to deal with religion, media, politics, and how Nazi doctors were flown into the US. He then brings up the government killing off Jim Jones. Now he brings up how Peter and Tim Mcveigh had to cut chips out of his head. Now he is bringing up Ted Kaczynski. Holy fuck, this guy is brilliant. He shows her the bug that implants in people and brainwashes people. This is nutty. He says that them meeting wasn’t coincidental. She says that she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.
She re-tells the story about how her child was abducted, and how he was smart enough to not talk to strangers, so now she is blaming Jerry. Holy fuck. She is blaming the government for paying Jerry to do it. Now RC is the one responsible for bringing the bugs according to her. Jerry gets out just when Peter shows up, how coincidental. This theory is amazing. He never had bugs till they had sex, and so she probably had the queen. I just can’t. She is convinced that she is the super mother bug and that they gave birth to them. So now they have to kill people. This seems practical. Now there’s a pizza guy at the door and they didn’t order it supposedly. She slides a $20 under the door. “If we don’t open the door, they’ll know we know”. Wow. I wish I had seen this in theaters. They are ripping apart the pizza and looking under the microscope. The helicopter is there, and Jerry wants in, but there is no helicopter outside. They are barricading the door. Everything is spinning. They are pouring gas everywhere. Time to both get nude and pour gas on themselves. This is a great idea. There’s the match. They say they love each other and light the match. Well, that went up fast.
End film
Sooo, what the fuck did I just see? Was that inane, or brilliant? I am more inclined to say brilliant. There is far more at play than my head can wrap around after only one viewing. The phone ringing with no light, the helicopter, the doctor taking a hit off the pipe, the nobody responding on the phone. Holy hell. I’ll be rewatching this. Whether it was average, good, or great, or in some cases bad, is always subjective with a film that has so many possible ways of viewing it. All I know is that I liked it and will watch it again. I don’t know if it was brilliant, but I can say that it intrigued me, and I can’t wait to watch it again and know what I want to look for.
Final rating: 6.5
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Lions Gate Films (presents) (as Lionsgate)
- L.I.F.T. Production
- DMK Mediafonds International
- Inferno Distribution (in association with) (as Inferno Distribution LLC)
- Bug (uncredited)
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