Bug Crawls

David Lynch has dabbled in the realms of many artistic mediums; as a matter of fact, he originally didn't intend to be a filmmaker and was instead mostly focused on being a painter, but one day I suppose he wanted to see his paintings move which led to his early "classic" horror animation "Six Figures Getting Sick Six Times" a semi disturbing avant- garde piece that reminds me quite a bit of his much later short "Bug Crawls". "Crawls" feels to me like a melding of Lynch's earliest and latest work, in particular his cryptic first shorts (ex: the aforementioned "Six Figures..." as well as parts of "The Alphabet" and "The Grandmother") and his equally, if not more cryptic recent works (ex: sections of "Inland Empire", practically anything else from Davidlynch.com, and "Twin Peaks" 2017, episode eight in particular, as well as anything featuring The Convenience Store). Lynch himself has said that this film is nothing more than a mood, and, admittedly, it's more of an art piece than a film. Like, I can imagine seeing this at the MoMA (in which case it'd be among it's better pieces I'm sure, and don't get me wrong I love going there but there's just some modern art that is really pathetic) more than I can a film festival. Either way, it's still creepy as Hell and a brilliantly haunting, atmospheric short that will appeal mostly to Lynch fans and anyone deeply interested in experimental art and cinema.

Bug Crawls (2008)

*** (out of 4)

For whatever reasons, filmmaker David Lynch has mostly been making shorts over the past decade and this one here certainly has his dark style written all over it. Basically we see a small house. We also see a bug. We see the bug slowly walk up to the house, walk over it and then fall off. That's basically everything that happens in this four minute short but if you're a fan of Lynch then you're probably going to enjoy the madness that is here. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but I enjoyed the dark nature of the film and the fact that you keep waiting for something "more" to happen and it actually never does. I'm sure many people would view this and ask what the point was but I think fans of Lynch are going to enjoy anything he's done and the people who will be most entertained by this are his fans and especially those who enjoyed his earliest short films.

David Lynch has unfortunately only really been making short films for most of the latter part of his career, which has deprived us of the man's knack for fantastically weird feature films. This one, like many of his shorts from this period is no more than a dark tone. In it, a large bug slowly approaches an ominous looking house set in a dark, bleak landscape. It crawls over the building and then enters it. There is truthfully little to this one other than a snippet of something strange. It is very reminiscent of Lynch's other recent experimental shorts. I can't say I am a huge fan of those or this one, although it is short enough to be an interesting enough watch, with its odd feel and ominous sound design. Essentially though, there isn't much to see here quite honestly.