“Shudderbugs” is an Ode to Grief & How it Lingers
While it might seem antithetical, a larger budget doesn’t always make a better film. You can throw all the money in the world at something, but what it always comes down to is the story. The heart and soul of a project lie in what a filmmaker is trying to tell. Sometimes it’s actually restrictions, like those that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic, that allow a film to blossom into something great. Such is the case with writer/director Johanna Putnam’s Shudderbugs.
Sam (Johanna Putnam) has recently lost her mother, Eliza (Beverly Cole Putnam), in suspicious circumstances. She returns to the home she grew up in to tie up loose ends, get her mother’s affairs in order, and try to move on from this loss. Shudderbugs gets its name from the phenomenon of the unsettling premonitions Eliza used to experience that are now plaguing Sam. Set over the course of a week, Sam untangles the scavenger hunt her mother left behind and the tedious paperwork that comes with loss. Shudderbugs isn’t an entirely straightforward story about grief, but a much more melancholic, languid, and contemplative film about the aftermath of life for the living.
It’s very clear that Shudderbugs is a COVID-era film, as the majority of it takes place in a single setting with a single actor. Sam talks on the phone to a friend, but we never see the friend. She interacts with bill collectors and medical personnel on the phone, again without the audience seeing these people. Her mother lives on through voiceovers of notes she left behind for Sam and through reminders she set for her Alexa-type device. The only other person we see is the odd neighbor who discovered Eliza when she died. Even then, Sam and the neighbor rarely share a scene together. In this way, Shudderbugs is a testament to the way art can thrive even in the most restrictive of conditions. You would lose something essential were you to fill Shudderbugs out with more characters and more locations. There’s something deeply haunting about Sak being secluded in the home where she grew up, buried in memories, and now, at the present, utterly and wholly alone.
Although it came out three years ago, Shudderbugs bears a striking resemblance to this year’s Invention. Both are set in secluded homes in rural New England(ish) areas and both are about an adult child sifting through the possessions of a late parent, trying to make sense of something that’s impossible to understand. The two also share a sense of fluidity about what is tangible and what is not. What hoops does our brain jump through to answer questions we may never know the truth about? The setting of Sam’s childhood home is such a compelling, liminal location. One of the most striking images in the film is adult Sam sitting on her bed with childhood artwork plastered on the walls behind her. She is somehow simultaneously grown and juvenile. More than capable of handling this, but also in desperate need of a parent’s hug.
Shudderbugs is about the things we leave behind. The memories, the trauma, and the profound absence of a loved one whose full story we may never know.
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