Bug is a surprisingly fantastic thriller that left me guessing the truth until the end and is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. When a lonely bartender meets a war veteran, their lives intertwine and create a terrifying gradation.

(This movie is extremely hard to describe without giving away the ending, so I suggest watching a trailer after reading my meager attempts at a plot explanation. The visuals in this movie are just as important as the plot points.) Slightly self destructive and lonely Agnes (Ashley Judd) is a bartender at a local lesbian bar. She lives in a tiny room in a rundown motel. One night her friend R.C., (Lynn Collins) brings by Peter (Michael Shannon) for an evening of partying. Agnes allows Peter to spend the night and their relationship blossoms. Agnes and Peter start finding bugs all over their room and eventually begin to put the pieces together of where the bugs came from. The audience and the characters spend the majority of the movie questioning their own sanity.

Director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts do a great job of making the characters’ ambiguous emotional status as mesmerizing as a ten car pileup. You can’t believe what you are seeing, you know you should look away and yet you can’t. In every scene, the characters’ motivations are clear and yet, the audience has a difficult time understanding the characters completely. Much of the drama of the movie is wondering if what Agnes and Peter are experiencing is real. All of the characters have two personality traits that are not only diametrically opposed but mutually exclusive. It makes these simple people complex and is really freakin’ scary.

The cast is limited, with only five characters. Each of the performances is more disturbing and mesmerizing than the next. William Friedkin should be commended for not only finding such a great cast, but a cast who has such great chemistry together.