Bugonia – Film Review

Yorgos Lanthimos has long thrived in the liminal space between cruelty and comedy, and Bugonia might be his most unsettlingly humorous—and emotionally devastating—work yet. A remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s cult classic Save the Green Planet! (2003), this Ireland–South Korea–United States co-production transforms its wildly absurd premise into a uniquely Lanthimos affair: deadpan violence, grotesque tenderness, and moral chaos pulsating beneath a straight-faced veneer. Yet even with familiar Lanthimos tonal flourishes, Bugonia feels startlingly fresh, propelled by phenomenal performances and a mounting sense of dread that creeps up like a hive slowly humming to life.

Emma Stone, reuniting with Lanthimos after The Favourite and Poor Things, delivers another fearless and dynamic turn as Michelle Fuller, a powerful pharmaceutical CEO abducted by two men convinced she’s an alien plotting Earth’s destruction. Jesse Plemons plays Teddy Gatz, the intense conspiracy theorist orchestrating the kidnapping, and his performance is so unsettling in its conviction that even the film’s strangest leaps feel grounded in psychological truth. As Don, Teddy’s gentle, neurodivergent cousin and accomplice, newcomer Aidan Delbis gives the film an aching emotional throughline—his instinctive compassion constantly clashes with his misplaced loyalty. With support from Alicia Silverstone and Stavros Halkias in smaller but memorable roles, the ensemble is both sharply tuned and deeply affecting.

The story begins with a kidnapping—brutal, sudden, and darkly humorous—yet what follows isn’t a conventional thriller. Lanthimos uses confinement not for suspense alone, but to probe deeper into belief, trauma, and obsession. The basement where Michelle is held becomes a psychological crucible: intimate, claustrophobic, and fraught with shifting power dynamics. Teddy and Don are convinced she is an alien infiltrator, and their interrogation blends absurd ritual with chilling cruelty. The situation creates a queasy, unpredictable tension where humor and horror coexist, often within the same breath.

Stone’s Michelle oscillates between icy composure, vulnerable desperation, and strategic adaptability. She attempts reason, manipulation, sympathy—testing every psychological tool at her disposal. Watching her strategize under duress is riveting. Yet Plemons remains almost unnervingly steady, playing Teddy not as a caricatured paranoiac but as a wounded believer desperately trying to impose meaning on a world that wronged him. That duality—the sincerity fused with madness—elevates the material beyond simple satire.

Lanthimos is not interested in heroes or villains here; every character exists in moral murk. Teddy is monstrous in action yet sympathetic in backstory. Michelle is composed and intelligent, yet we sense that her corporate power may mask chilling truths of its own—ethical, scientific, existential. The film plays with shifting audience allegiance constantly, refusing to offer anyone safe ground. In Lanthimos fashion, the absurdity becomes a mirror, reflecting uncomfortable questions about trust, suffering, corporate systems, and the allure of conspiracy thinking.

Stylistically, Bugonia is recognizably Lanthimos yet distinct from his prior works. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography balances sterile corporate environments with grimy domestic spaces and unsettling dreamlike interludes. A color palette alternating between clinical whites, earthy decay tones, and the soft golden warmth of lantern light creates visual dissonance that underscores the film’s tonal contradictions. The imagery of bees and hives appears throughout—not only symbolic but textural, adding an eerie buzz to the film’s rhythm. Jerskin Fendrix’s score, eerie and playful in equal measure, slithers underneath scenes with strings that scrape and synths that pulse like an anxious heartbeat.

Comedy here serves not as relief, but as a sinister echo chamber. Characters say ridiculous things with total sincerity, and scenes pivot between laugh-out-loud absurdity and gut-wrenching brutality without warning. That tonal precision is where Lanthimos excels: not by balancing humor and horror, but by letting them contaminate each other. The result is a viewing experience marked by discomfort, uneasy laughter, and emotional whiplash. The absurdity always feels like an extension of psychological truth, not a shield from it.

Beneath the black comedy and genre trappings lies a meditation on obsession and meaning-making in a fractured world. Conspiracy, in Lanthimos’ hands, isn’t simply paranoia—it’s longing. Teddy’s delusions radiate from abandonment, trauma, and a need to locate purpose within chaos. His belief in cosmic conflict becomes a coping mechanism for personal loss. Don’s role adds a counterpoint: someone shaped by the same world but yearning simply to be kind, to belong, to understand. Their dynamic is quietly tragic, and Delbis’ heartbreaking sincerity amplifies the film’s emotional resonance.

Stone’s performance is astonishingly layered, revealing fragility beneath corporate armor and quiet terror behind calculated calm. She plays Michelle as someone accustomed to wielding control—of people, of perception, of systems—and watching that control strip away is mesmerizing. It’s a role requiring simultaneous vulnerability and opacity, and Stone threads that needle flawlessly. Plemons, meanwhile, gives one of the most chilling performances of his career, portraying Teddy not as a typical villain but as someone frightening precisely because he sees himself as righteous and tender.

Where the film falters slightly is in pacing. Its middle section, while emotionally rich and psychologically complex, occasionally lingers a beat too long on scenes of interrogation and delusion. Yet even these moments serve the suffocating tension and creeping dread Lanthimos cultivates. The slight narrative drag is a minor blemish on a film so committed to immersion.

Without revealing specifics, the finale is bold, divisive, and philosophically charged—blending existential dread with surrealism in a way that will linger long after the credits. Lanthimos refuses catharsis and embraces the bleak, absurd horror of cosmic indifference and human frailty. The ending’s thematic ambitions elevate the film beyond psychological thriller into something mythic, strange, and devastating.

Bugonia succeeds not only as a remake but as a radical reinterpretation. Where Save the Green Planet! was manic and unhinged, Lanthimos opts for icy absurdity and slow-burn dread. His film mourns humanity as much as it mocks it. It asks whether monstrosity arises from nature, nurture, or systemic cruelty—and whether suffering ever truly justifies delusion or violence. It is as hilarious as it is harrowing, as emotionally raw as it is stylized.

Bugonia is a beautifully disturbing work bursting with bitter humor, psychological complexity, and two astonishing lead performances that deserve awards conversation. It’s a film likely to provoke debate, disquiet, and admiration in equal measure—a cinematic beehive buzzing with intelligence, venom, tragedy, and bizarre beauty.

Lanthimos has crafted a darkly funny cautionary tale about belief, power, and the terrifying fragility of human conviction. The bees hum, the laughter curdles, and in the end, the sting is unforgettable.