Désir rampant

I watched this tonight as my inauguration to Amazon Instant Video. Never heard of it or the series before, so I went into it having no idea what it was about. I thought it was fantastic and the negative reviews from members of the "gay community" don't surprise me (yes, I am gay.) As another reviewer said, "if you demand that LGBT films provide some kind of cheerful morality tale or insist that every movie with LGBT characters must have some universal gay community message, you'll be disappointed with what you get with this film." All the more reason to watch in my opinion. I don't think the gay community will ever get how self-destructive and detrimental it is to itself.

I like the idea of having whispers in the background, it's very clever. What annoys me is that what could have been a good story is screwed up by making it all freaky and weird.

It is made and performed well, but it's just not really my thing. There's something kind of sexual about it in a weird fetish type way though.

Terrible ending, I need closure!!! And bugs are gross!

I understand people finding it disturbing, but that is the point of a horror film, isn't it? Part of it being scary is that you can see where this could happen. I believe it's great that we can have a gay horror story. I've seen far more disturbing films, and it is easy to feel isolated in high school. We all want friends. We all want to feel attractive to someone we like. We all want to feel like we fit in. As for the negative reviews, if you do not like horror films, then do not watch them.

I saw Bugcrush this evening as a part of the Palm Springs Short Film Festival. It was the final movie in the series of gay shorts, with the other movies (for the most part) being funny & interesting. This was the last movie - and was dark, disturbing, grotesque, and bizarre. Perhaps if I was prepared for a creepy, scary movie I would have enjoyed it - but I gasped in all the same parts that the rest of the sold-out gay crowd did. When the Q&A's came at the end, more than half the crowd got up and left, saying things like "Let's get out of here, so I don't have to hear anything about Bugcrush." Of the eight movies shown, Bugcrush was the most memorable - but not in a good way. If that was the point of the movie - it succeeded.

I watched 'bugcrush' last night and had such mixed feelings about it. I went online tonight and tried to find the short story by Scott Treleaven. It was one of the gay horror stories in Queer Fear 2 published in 2003. I was surprised by a few of the overly negative comments posted here. Yes, I was a little shocked and disturbed by the ending of the story, but it was a horror story. How many horror stories have we seen using the same seductions and with the same outcome. As a gay man I must have a thicker skin than most. I was spellbound by the direction. The acting was good and sometimes better than good. I had to re-watch the ending several times to come to grips with what just happen. Looking back in the story I realized that the author/director had warned us several times of the coming doom. How many of us have been lured by the danger in the quest for fulfillment. A lesson for all who take the risk with expectations of delight.