Reelscope’s 31 Days of Horror
Bug
Directed by: William Friedkin
Written by: Tracy Letts
Starring: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.
Release Date: May 25, 2007
In Bug (2007), director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts craft a suffocating horror of paranoia and madness. Ashley Judd delivers one of the boldest, most fearless performances of her career.
The Lost Stardom of Ashley Judd
At one time, in the late 1990s, Ashley Judd seemed poised to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. After the twin successes of Kiss the Girls and Double Jeopardy, she became the go-to leading lady for smart, tough thrillers. Unfortunately, that success also led to typecasting — Judd became trapped in a loop of increasingly absurd mystery thrillers, culminating in the nearly unwatchable Twisted (2003).
But the real derailment of Judd’s career, as she’s since revealed, wasn’t just typecasting. It was Harvey Weinstein’s blacklist of actresses who refused to bow to his predatory control of the industry.
After taking nearly two years away from film, Judd returned with a shocking, fearless role in Bug, a claustrophobic psychological horror film from The Exorcist director William Friedkin.
A Descent into Madness
In Bug, Judd plays Agnes White, a lonely, traumatized waitress living in a crumbling Oklahoma motel. She works nights at what’s described as a honky-tonk lesbian bar — though Agnes herself isn’t gay — and she’s haunted by the ghosts of her abusive marriage to Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.) and the loss of their kidnapped child.
When Jerry is released from prison, Agnes begins receiving eerie hang-up calls at her motel room, intensifying her paranoia. Into this fragile, paranoid existence steps Peter Evans (Michael Shannon), a quiet, awkward Gulf War veteran who claims to have nowhere else to go. Introduced by Agnes’s friend R.C. (Lynn Collins), Peter becomes both a comfort and a contagion — the first man to show her kindness in years and the one who will unravel her mind completely.
The Horror of Connection
What begins as an odd but tender relationship between two broken people quickly spirals into delirium. A simple bug bite triggers Peter’s belief that insects are crawling beneath his skin — government experiments, hidden transmitters, microscopic invaders. Agnes, desperate for meaning and human connection, descends into the same nightmare.
As their shared psychosis deepens, Friedkin’s camera traps us inside their motel room — a sweaty, suffocating box where love curdles into obsession and the line between flesh and delusion disappears. The film’s climax is a fever dream of tinfoil, fire, and blood.
Judd’s performance is astonishing. It’s raw, trembling, and entirely exposed — the kind of fearless acting that should have reignited her career. Michael Shannon, meanwhile, gives Peter a haunting stillness, his paranoia radiating like heat through the screen.
Friedkin’s Final Great Descent
Friedkin, already a master of psychological horror through The Exorcist, finds something even more disturbing in Bug: the horror of human loneliness. There are no demons here, no supernatural evil — just two people so desperate to believe in something that they invent a monster to make their suffering make sense.
Bug isn’t for everyone. It’s talky, intense, and almost unbearably intimate. But it’s also one of the most daring psychological horror films of the 2000s — a chamber piece of madness that crawls under your skin and never leaves.
Final Thoughts
Bug (2007) was both a return to form for Friedkin after years in the weeds and a revelation for Ashley Judd who was already a big star but showed she was far more talented than merely a movie star. Bug is an unnerving, gut-churning descent into shared delusion — a film that’s hard to watch and impossible to forget.
In a just world, this would have been the film that reignited Judd’s stardom. Instead, it remains a chilling reminder of how fearless she could be when given a role worthy of her talent.
