I Last night I had the pleasure of seeing the movie BUG at the Florida Film Festival and let me say it was a real treat. The Directors were there and they did a Q&A afterwards. The movie begins with a young boy smashing a roach beneath his foot, a man who is nearby parking his car sees the young boy smash it and runs to ask the kid `why? why? did he have to kill that living creature?' in his rush to counsel the youth in the error of his ways, the man neglects to pay his parking meter, which starts off a whole chain of events involving people not at all related to him, some funny, some sad, and some ridiculous. This movie has a lot of laughs, Lots! and there are many actors which you will recognize. The main actors who stood out in the film for me were: Jamie Kennedy (from his comedy show the Jamie Kennedy Experiment, playing a fortune cookie writer; John Carroll Lynch (who plays Drew's cross dressing brother on the Drew Carey show) playing the animal loving guy who just can't get it right; Brian Cox (The original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter) playing the germaphobic owner of a Donut and Chinese Food Take Out joint. There is one line where Cox tells his chef to wash off some pigs blood that is on the sidewalk by saying "clean up that death" which is quite funny mostly because of Cox's "obsessed with germs" delivery. The funniest moment in the movie comes when a young boy imitates his father, whom he heard earlier in the day yell out `MotherF*****', while in the classroom. Another extremely funny and surreal scene is when Trudie Styler (Mrs. Sting herself) and another actor perform a scene on a cable access show, from the film the boy in the plastic bubble. The actor who hosts the cable access show is just amazing he is so serious and deadpan and his performance as both the doctor and the boy in the plastic bubble is enthralling. There are many other fine and funny actors and actresses in this film and having shot it in less than a month with a budget of just about $1 million, the directors Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (who are screenwriters by trade, having written crazy/beautiful and the upcoming Tuxedo starring Jackie Chan) have achieved a film that is great, funny and endearing.

This movie start quite gruesomely with a female being bound and psychologically tortured. There's male full frontal nudity, dead animal parts, dogs licking nipples, the female loosing control of her bladder. All shot in a gray cold color. Effective, but a little too much. We then move on to seeing the BTK killer's youth as well as the present and his history of crimes. The tension is entirely psychological and the scenes of the killer entering the homes of his victims and talking to them lasts for quite a long time and it's creepy. Here we don't see fancy or good imagery, it looks as if shot with your home camera. It doesn't look horrifying, but in a way seeing a criminal engage his victims for quite some time before killing them is quite unusual and chilling. What this movie doesn't have is any drama, really. There are some cop scenes every once in a while, but there's no excitement in terms of them finding the killer. There isn't much of an arc to this story. This could have been an effective psychological thriller, a study of madness. Unfortunately, the movie is filled with real slaughterhouse footage. It's dispersed throughout the movie and comes on suddenly again and again. Sometimes you don't know it's coming and don't have enough time to look away. And that I have to reject. I'm all for low budget horror movies but I don't tolerate animal suffering. It was unnecessary, excessive, and comes without warning. I'm glad that Lionsgate releases stuff that no one else does, but they should have passed on this movie or edited out the animal gore. Stay away from this garbage.