Surprise, surprise, the last 15 years or so haven’t convinced Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos to discover a newfound faith in humanity.
At least since 2009’s Dogtooth—through the likes of The Lobster, The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness—Lanthimos has put the human species on trial. In almost every case, we’ve been found guilty. Bugonia, his latest, feels like a final verdict.
Those last three films featured Emma Stone, as does Bugonia. She plays Michelle Fuller, the highly optimized CEO of a pharmaceutical giant. Kidnapped from her luxury home one day, Michelle finds herself in the basement of disenfranchised minimum-wage worker Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons, another Kinds of Kindness vet) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Teddy makes a bizarre claim: that Michelle belongs to an alien race of Andromedans who are manipulating the forces of business and politics in order to covertly turn humanity into a subservient species (they’re also killing all the bees). His demand? An audience with the Andromedan emperor.
It would be hard for Stone to push the performance envelope further than she did in Poor Things, where she offered a violent, sexually voracious, sympathetic spin on Frankenstein’s monster. Still, this is hardly a glamorous role, especially after Teddy shaves Michelle’s head (he believes that’s how she communicates with her fellow aliens) and insists that she lotion her entire body. The result looks something like Nosferatu’s younger sister. Undeterred and with eyes even more commanding than usual, Michelle attempts to punch holes in Teddy’s conspiracy theories, which he clings to with increasing agitation. (As an actor, Plemons is maybe the truest believer we have right now—no one else brings quite this level of conviction to whomever it is they’re plaing—so the role of Teddy is perfect for him.)
In a way, Teddy’s wild theory works as a rebuttal to the misanthropy that runs through Lanthimos’ movies. We eventually gather that his life has been one of limited resources, familial opioid addiction, and exploitation at the hands of corporations. Rather than helplessly despair over human culpability in all of this, it’s easier for him to blame aliens. (Better that they’re killing the bees, rather than being faced with the fact that we are the murderers.) Don, who appears to be on the autism spectrum (as is Delbis, a nonprofessional actor making his screen debut), may be largely following Teddy’s lead, but he’s perceptive on this point. He tells Teddy with a sympathetic sigh: “I wish I could fix everything that’s been done to you.”
As an “explainer” of sorts about the current sociopolitical state of America, Bugonia shares something in common with other 2025 movies like Eddington and One Battle After Another. Yet as we learn more about Teddy, the more we find ourselves in familiar Lanthimos territory (despite the fact that Bugonia is based on the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!). In the film’s ultimate view, it doesn’t matter what time and place Teddy lives, because humans have been garbage since the beginning. A climactic twist—which I won’t reveal—is a deflating joke that mostly serves to put a fine point on this.
Has Lanthimos told this joke too many times? Bugonia has its creative “pleasures.” In the striking prologue, Teddy and Don’s preparations are filmed in deeply saturated colors, while Michelle’s daily routine is filmed in crisp, cool visual tones. The kidnapping itself is an amusing instance of Lanthimos combining terror and comedy (Michelle kicking off her heels to fight back; Don at one point feebly misting pepper spray at her back). But mostly it feels like we’ve been here before, with the same faces.
(11/13/2025)
