Bug

8/30/2022

Possession has been a lifelong preoccupation for William Friedkin. He’s addressed it head-on as both fiction and fact, but Bug sees him take a more oblique route. Here’s the story of a man so thoroughly possessed by paranoia that his delusions are contagious. One demon leaves one body to enter another, but an obsession is Legion. Every Michael Shannon performance is arguably his best, but this is a film tailor-made for his fascinating idiosyncrasies. Aphid and spastic, his body language stops short of actually turning into a freaking insect. Ashley Judd, however, has a more challenging role, because not only does she have to sell the transition from sane to crazy, but then she has to catch up with Shannon, go toe-to-toe with him, match his manic intensity — and I’ll be damned if she