Bug Girls in Horror: A Multimedia Wander

Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, I’ve gathered up a list of multimedia bug-related horror!

Josie is walking through the woods when she sees something ahead, lying by the side of the curving path. At a glance, it appears to be a mannequin—not especially strange, considering the woods are still littered with the remnants of her village’s annual Devil’s March. The tradition brings a raucous parade of locals on a winding hike through the woods, hauling an effigy that they eventually hurl from a cliff.

But the mannequin isn’t a mannequin. It’s a body. And as Josie reels from this realization, a torrent of insects pour from its many wounds. When Josie resurfaces from shock, she discovers that the insects—a swarming, opinionated colony of ants—have taken up residence inside her body.

This is the central premise of ITCH!, a novel by Gemma Amor that was freshly released in the US on January 13. It’s part folk horror, part crime fiction, and one hundred percent infested by squirming, crawling, creeping beasties that got under my skin in the best possible way.

I loved ITCH! and ever since I read it, my mind has been swarmed by memories of my favorite bug-related horror moments. As always, I’d love to know yours! Feel free to hit reply to tell me about your favorite infestations.

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First, a question: Why do we fear bugs?

I was an arachnophobe for many years. Spiders’ movements—abrupt, unpredictable, speedy—frightened me. I vividly remember riding my bike as a kid, zooming past a mailbox when the sudden stickiness of spider silk filled my mouth. No matter how much I sputtered and spat, it felt impossible to dislodge.

If spiders don’t bother you, there are plenty of other phobia-inspiring bugs to consider: Roaches, centipedes, wasps, mosquitos spreading disease with every sip of blood. Once in college, my housemate brought home a guy who brought bedbugs with him. She dumped him soon after, and an exterminator took care of the infestation.

As if real bugs weren’t enough, our brains tend to conjure up bugs during moments of psychological distress. Entomological hallucinations, as they’re called, are a common side effect of both alcohol withdrawal and chronic cocaine use. Real bugs don’t need to be present for the itch to set in—simply the suggestion can spark a contagious outbreak of scratching that spreads from person to person. Illusory parasitosis occurs when we itch from a stimulus we misattribute to insects; formication like Josie’s occurs when our skin is disturbed by a crawling sensation, with no identifiable cause.

I’ve been searching my memory for my earliest memory of bug-related horror, and I’m fairly confident it came from science fiction. In 1963, The Outer Limits released “The Zanti Misfits,” an episode in which aliens exile their criminals to a remote California desert. (I wasn’t born until 1992, so it was already a classic by the time it arrived in my world.)

The episode builds dread so, so effectively—as the military amasses in the desert, the Zanti ships dispatch cryptic messages and announcements over their radios, driving tensions ever higher. When the grotesque Zanti aliens descend they’re both hilarious and horrifying in their practical effects. You can watch the whole episode on YouTube for free!

The Zanti misfits don’t really disclose their cultural views on gender—but as far as I’m concerned, they are all that girl. Who among us isn’t trying to survive in a hostile world determined to destroy our existence?

In 1985, Dario Argento’s Phenomena ushered in a new era for bug girls in horror. Just one year before she starred in Labyrinth, Argento cast Jennifer Connelly as a student at a sinister Swiss boarding school where the girls are picked off by a murderer, one by one.

The serial killer has successfully hidden his crimes from human eyes—but he can’t evade the Alps’ ever-present population of flies, gnats, and lightning bugs. With the help of an entomologist played by Donald Pleasence, Connelly discovers and harnesses her psychic connection to the insect world, uncovering clues that eventually lead to the killer.

Phenomena is outlandish, but it’s also charming and sincere. Connelly’s scenes with the bugs are surprisingly tender, an interspecies collaboration that’s built on empathy.

Like Gemma Amor’s ITCH!, Phenomena also revels in both the delicacy and grossness of the insect world. Argento’s sets range from the entomologist’s neat home laboratory to a pit filled with squirming bodies. It’s a sublime, wonderful tension that shows how context transforms our relationship to the insect world.

Next: May I humbly propose that Dana Scully is a bug girl? Maybe not in every episode, but definitely in 1994’s “Darkness Falls.”

The episode takes Scully and Mulder to a remote logging site in rural Washington. An entire crew has vanished without explanation, and our beloved FBI agents uncover tensions with local environmental activists and something much, much stranger.

As an ancient swarm of insects descends on the abandoned logging camp, Scully’s forced to draw on all of her scientific rationality to learn how to keep the insects at bay. The stakes are deadly: If she’s unable to ward them off, they’ll cocoon everyone in paralyzing webs and desiccate their bodies.

The imagery in this episode is stunning—shimmering clouds of insects, towering pine trees, dented pickup trucks, rutted dirt and gravel roads, Scully’s iconic ‘90s neon parka. I think it’s one of the best monster-of-the-week episodes from the show’s entire run.

And as a current Washington resident who lives in the woods, I can confirm that bugs are a fact of life. From orb weaver season in October to the random earwigs I find creeping around our kitchen, there’s always something for our three cats to hunt.

Finally, the most recent bug girl on screen has to be Mia Goth, playing Lady Elizabeth in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Her costumes—impeccably designed by Kate Hawley—shimmer with beetle-like iridescence, and she’s unafraid to let insects crawl across her hands. She studies the tiny creatures with open fascination, never flinching from them. Elizabeth has a reverence for these small lives, and her attention imbues their aimless wandering with a certain degree of dignity.

Elizabeth’s attitude toward insects is an early hint of the immense compassion she’ll display toward the Creature. To Elizabeth, a life is a life, no matter how small, unusual, or difficult to understand.

I mentioned earlier that I used to suffer from arachnophobia. I don’t any more.

During the first terrible year of the pandemic, a massive spider spun her web across our apartment window. At first, I shuddered at the sight of her. But little by little, I became curious.

I noticed that she stuck to a regimented daily routine. She liked to rest in the corner of her web during the day, as starlings and the occasional eagle swooped past our window in search of food. At dawn and dusk, she’d scuttle busily around, checking her web and repairing torn strands. When a bug got trapped, she’d efficiently bundle her prey for later. That included the smaller male spiders that attempted to woo her. Once they served their purpose, they became dinner, too.

I’ll admit that I was a little crazy from being trapped inside for months, but we didn’t have our cats yet, and it felt like having a pet. I became invested in her daily happenings, cheering her on when she caught a cicada, watching her tiny babies build tiny webs of their own. My fear faded as I got used to seeing her, and an unexpected, tender love began to bloom. Now, I let my house spiders coexist around me, sometimes escorting them to safety if the cats haven’t spotted them first.

I live thousands of miles away now, and I know that my beloved spider’s life has probably reached its natural end. But she’ll always live in my memory, spinning and weaving compassion in my heart.

Up Next: THE BONE TEMPLE

Jack and I are going to see the new 28 Days Later sequel this weekend! I’m so happy. I don’t claim to be a film critic, but I’ll share my spoiler-free thoughts in next week’s newsletter.

I have many interview irons in the fire still, so keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll have a new conversation to share soon, too!

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.