Judd plays Agnes , a sweaty, coke-snorting woman cooped up in an Oklahoma motel room, where most of the movie is set. Agnes has a problem with her phone. It won't stop ringing. But whoever's at the other end doesn't say anything. She assumes it's her abusive jailbird ex. One drug-fueled evening, Agnes's lesbian friend R.C. (Lynn Collins ) deposits a stranger at Agnes's dingy hovel. He's a tall, wide-faced creature named Peter (Michael Shannon ).
At first, Peter doesn't say a whole lot. He's simply imposing in a way that's sweet and the littlest bit scary. This is, in part, because Peter -- especially when he holds a lamp too close to his face -- looks a lot like young Christopher Walken . It's a resemblance that promises the bizarre. And Peter doesn't disappoint, explaining his uncanny ability to make people nervous: "I pick up things unapparent."
He picks up the sound of a cricket chirping in Agnes's room, for starters. Then he picks up Agnes's willingness to hear it, too.
Were the chirps just her smoke alarm? It barely matters. Suffering a void in her life, she's open to hearing and seeing whatever else he might think he hears and sees. This includes the aphid he swears has bitten him after they make love. Friedkin films the sex like something out of a nature special, with nipples, legs, smalls of the back, and other areas ambiguously arched and spread. In case we've missed the connection, he's redundantly thrown in a scare-shot of an insect at the end of his steamy montage.
That bite in her bed turns into an obsessive search for more bugs, then more bites, both of which Agnes says she sees. Does she see them because they're really there? Does she see them because she's high? Does she see them because she's empathizing with the increasingly unhinged Peter, who basically moves in?
