| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A triumph for Judd and the director.
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| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Begins as an ominous rumble of unease, and builds to a shriek. The last 20 minutes are searingly intense: A paranoid personality finds its mate, and they race each other into madness.
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
Engrossingly manic version of Tracy Letts's great stage play.
|
| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
The enjoyably icky heart of Bug is still contained within the airless, increasingly ''bug-proofed'' room that becomes Agnes and Peter's whole world.
|
| 80 |
New York Magazine
Has the feverish compression of live theater and the moody expansiveness of film. The mix is insanely powerful.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Steppenwolf alumnus Tracy Letts adapted his play into this fearsome horror movie, directed with single-minded claustrophobia by William Friedkin.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Kamal AL-Solaylee
It's one helluva movie that makes Ashley Judd look ugly and demented, while turning Harry Connick Jr. into the most frightening screen thug since Ben Kingsley in "Sexy Beast."
|
| 75 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Friedkin's latest rivals his Druid horror flick "The Guardian" for sheer lunacy--Bug remains disconcerting, real, and raw. It poignantly suggests that some lost souls would rather be crazy and doomed than alone.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Ashley Judd as Agnes White, and a relative newcomer, the remarkable Michael Shannon, as Peter Evans. They're both spellbinding.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Bug has an uncompromising, anything-goes daring: Friedkin, 71, has nothing to lose at this point, and he has made this low-budget, brazenly over-the-top picture strictly on his own terms.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Tirdad Derakhshani
After nearly three decades of misfires, major and minor, William Friedkin, the creator of "The French Connection," "The Exorcist" and "Sorcerer," is back in true form with Bug. And heaven help us for it.
|
| 70 |
Slate
Dana Stevens
It's unapologetically theatrical.
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
Rob Nelson
Genuinely freaky-deaky, not to mention more inventively unsettling than anything Friedkin has mustered in the quarter-century since twisting little Linda Blair into a satanic spewer of pea soup and F-bombs.
|
| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Duane Byrge
With his (Friedkin) vigorous camera compositions and a talented cast, he manages to straddle a wickedly fine line between taught portrayal of paranoia and parody of paranoia.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
We find ourselves in the fascinating no man's land between horror and comedy -- right where this movie wants us to be.
|
| 70 |
The New York Times
The escalating hysteria and grisly set pieces of Bug may strain credulity, but Ms. Judd has never been more believable as a woman condemned to attract the wrong kind of man.
|
| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
As near as I can tell, it's the smallest-scale, lowest-budget, most experimental film Friedkin has ever made, as well as the most thoroughly unpleasant and off-putting -- though it builds a grisly, masochistic fascination as it powers along.
|
| 63 |
ReelViews
Bug is creepy and hard to dismiss, but it's not a lot of fun and its weaknesses leave a bitter aftertaste.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Buzzes around in random menace for an hour until its third act, when - zzzzzt! - it flies straight into the zapper.
|
| 60 |
Film Threat
Don R. Lewis
It's a tough one to recommend to everyone. Just know now this isn't a horror film as they're making it out to be nor is it a true return to form for Friedkin. Even so, it's worth seeing but perhaps as a DVD rental further down the road.
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
By the end of Bug, you may find yourself scratching yourself as well -- your head, that is -- wondering what the hell this is all about.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
A tale of love, desperation and conspiratorial madness, comes off on the big screen as a wacky psychological snow job.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Creepy and unsettling, to say nothing of gory, but overall it's a little claustrophobic and uneven.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Bug won't get under your skin as much as it will assault you with its ghastly claustrophobic drama and over-the-top performances.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
A ludicrous foray into psychological horror.
|
| 42 |
Christian Science Monitor
If you have claustrophobia and/or fear insects, the last film you should see is Bug. I'm not sure it's worth a trip even if you don't suffer from those maladies.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
Our traumatized soldiers deserve better representation than this irretrievably ridiculous drama, which will do nothing to revive the flagging fortunes of the man whose career lay down and died after "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection."
|
| 40 |
Variety
A ranting, claustrophobic drama that trades in shopworn paranoid notions, William Friedkin's overwrought screen version of Tracy Letts' play assaults the viewer with aggressive thesping and over-the-top notions of shocking incident, all to intensely alienating effect.
|
| 30 |
Salon.com
A humorless picture, a somber, arty exercise in deep denial of its exploitation roots. The dialogue is stiff and mechanical and the performances are too.
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