Bugcrush (2006)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Sex involves fear. Sex can be, in fact, terrifying; but nothing could be more frightening than the first sexual experience between Ben and Grant.Both boys attend high school and meet in detention after one of them is caught smoking. Grant's sloppiness and roughness are a major turn on for Ben. Since the first minutes, there is a clear division between these characters. Ben idly chats with a friend while sitting on his car, while Grant arrives to school on the bus. Ben's harmonic features place him in traditional beauty canons while Grant's physical harshness and neglected self-care are almost enough to ostracize him.Nonetheless, Ben will feel attracted to Grant from the very beginning. And out of this attraction, he will accept to give his new friend and two other boys a ride home. Night falls as they reach an isolated house in the middle of the woods. During the long hours driving, the other boys make fun of Ben, trying to make him feel guilty for owning a car and living in a good neighborhood. None of this matters to Ben, who is fixated on Grant and the possibility of spending time with him.When Claude Levi-Strauss, father of Structuralism, described the socialization process in tribes that had never been visited by Western people, he came to a conclusion. When describing the organization of the shelters, some of the inhabitants would lay out a map of sorts in which all placements were equally distributed, close to the river and somehow in an orderly manner; while the others would describe this organization in two opposing arrangements, in which a group of power would have a privileged location near the river while the rest was confined in peripheral settlements. For Levi-Strauss, this was irrefutable evidence that people have a certain mental structure, and they build their view on the world upon those structures; it doesn't matter if they have been raised according to Western values or not.This structure of social unfairness is present in the beginning of Carter Smith's short film, but it only gets heightened at the end. Grant's friends are clearly society's rejects, even at such a young age, they're resentful and envious. But not Grant whose mind and goals are entirely somewhere else, far away from society's faults.Grant tells Ben a rather unpleasant story. Before moving into town, he used to go to the woods and jerk off while looking at the stars, until one night, just before climax, he feels a pinch in his leg and all of a sudden his nervous system paralyzes. Grant confesses that even though he understood he could die, that was still the best and most intense sexual moment of his life.As he intends to repeat this experiment with Ben, one thing remains clear: this is not about sex, and it was never about sex, it's all about the Lacanian phantasm. The peculiar joy of flirting with death is marked by the economy of the excess, and it will fuel the strengthening of the phantasm as a screen that veils the lack in the other. Despite being beautiful, Ben is, after all, just a good, normal boy, possessing nothing that could ignite depravity in the eyes of Grant. In "Bugcrush", this moment is marked by the emergence of sexual excitation when the two boys sit together in bed; the real irrupts in Ben's body producing a fracture at the level of the narcissistic capture of his bodily image; perhaps akin to Grant's anecdote on immobile limbs. Anything that filters, that appears through this structural fissure – the privilege point for the appearance of the phantasmatic object- will provoke angst. The perverse phantasm is expressed by the neurotic as a way of containing, covering his angst before the other's desire, while at the same time it permits the neurotic to situate the realization of his desire at a distance. One way of understanding the ending, which I won't spoil, is to accept that while Ben looks for companionship Grant seeks only that which will fulfill its fantasy; and it's not a sexual fantasy, it's a fantasy that appears to be sexual but depends only on the phantasmatic reenactment of that near-to-death experience he talked about. And that is why Lacan says that the phantasm's function is to support desire, to sustain it and maintain, but to never satisfy it.Few times have I seen such an unexpected and bone-chilling ending. A truly remarkable work, especially keeping in mind the intensity reached after only half an hour. Now we know the phantasm, after all, cannot function in terms of love or sex, and that is what Ben will come to understand… only too late.

Awful short. It's about this gay high school kid who's attracted to a new kid in the school. The new kid is tall, smokes and is in good shape. The new kid invites him to his house (in the middle of nowhere) one night and thinks just turn dark and ugly.Seriously WHAT is this about? I have no problem with dark movies but a coherent plot would be nice too! The film is shot in a fragmented style that makes what little plot the film has hard to follow. It SEEMS to be saying something totally negative about being gay and being attracted to the wrong guy--that's all I could get out of it. It ends like a horror movie--a bad one. The acting is (I suppose) good--it's really hard to tell do to the awful dialogue and directing. A sick, disturbing and ultimately pointless short. Skip it.

What an impressive film debut for Carter Smith. Based on a short story by Steven Treleaven about a high school loner who is attracted to a mysterious new comer. He follows him to a remote farm with chilling results. This is a scary movie and ominous metaphor for the dangers of sexual experimentation.Smith works wonders in creating foreboding and eroticism in the possibilities of the dark of night. The production values and acting are all uniformly excellent. Carter Smith has a real talent and is to be looked forward to in his upcoming projects. It makes perfect sense that he is developing a screenplay with cult writer, Dennis Cooper. This is no J.T. Leroy, Carter Smith is the genuine thing and in the best of horror, He reminds me too of H.P. Lovecraft, and the best short fiction of Stephen King and the noir-ish writings of Black Cat magazine.I can't wait to see what he does next.

I'm on the short subject selection committee for a film festival and just screened this with the committee last night. When the film was over there was silence in the room... What can you say about a film that is so thoroughly sickening and disturbing? This was NOT a condemnation of date rape--if it had been, it might have had a reason to exist. But, no... not only did the filmmaker choose to depict gay date rape between minors, he lovingly reveled in the acts of the rapist. All you people who loved the film watch it again and pay attention to the director's choices... every shot is meant to make the viewer identify with the rapist. You can say all you want about the directorial style and the technical proficiency of the film, it doesn't matter. What kind of person wakes up one day and says, "I really NEED to make a film about the sickest, most perverted sexual crime I can imagine?" This film is completely vile.