The world is dying. The beers are disappearing, the rich are getting richer, and Big Pharma CEO get away with atrocities. That’s Bugonia, and the only thing to do, according to part-time beekeeper Teddy (Jesse Plemons), is to kidnap a high-powered CEO named Michelle (Emma Stone) because he is convinced she happens to be a member of the Andromedan alien race who have been experimenting and messing with humanity for millennia.
The plan is to kidnap Michelle, shave her head (because long hair is how the Andromedans transmit communications, duh), and chain her to his basement until she agrees to give Teddy an audience with her emperor so he can parlay on behalf of Earth.
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Does Teddy have a single ounce of evidence of the alien invasion other than random conspiracy videos on YouTube and podcasts? Absolutely not. Is the fact that Teddy’s mom (Alicia Silverstone) was put into a coma after a botched medical trial done to her by Michelle’s company make this righteous crusade at least a little bit muddled? Maybe. But none of that matters, because Teddy is trying to save the world.
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone continue their dark comedy streak.
Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest dark comedy, shares similarities with another highly polarizing dark comedy from earlier in the year — Eddington. Not only because Ari Aster is a producer on Bugonia, but also because both films take a similar approach to the cultural aftershocks of the pandemic with self-righteous ambiguity.
The film is a remake of wirter-director Jang Joon-hwan‘s Save the Green Planet!, a movie that takes its concept less seriously and goes for a more B-movie tone. Lanthimos makes the story his own, taking Will Tracy’s (Succession, The Menu) script and giving it his signature detached style and knack for visuals. The film has a glossy look and features a heavy use of close-ups that accentuate the brilliant performances of the two leads (the best part of the movie, by far). Indeed, the reason to go see Bugonia is to see Plemons and Stone just dominate the screen.
Plemons plays Teddy with an angry awkwardness that hides a gentle side to him. This is a man who is kidnapping and torturing a woman, who represents the worst part of our post-2020 tinfoil-hat paranoid society, yet who genuinely and sincerely believes he’s doing something for the good of mankind. Meanwhile, Stone does a fantastic job portraying the contradictions of Michelle’s character.
Bugonia tries its hardest to hit a relevant moment, but falls flat.
She seems proud of having a framed picture of Michelle Obama in her office, encourages employees not to stay at work after 5:30 p.m., and spends her boardroom meetings talking about doing better than the company’s questionable past methods. And yet, she complains about having to use inclusive language in her DEI training, adds enough “buts” and excuses to her leaving work early talk that it’s impossible to know if she actually allows them to leave early or not.
This is where Lanthimos’ Bugonia falls flat, in the way it tries to say something about post-2020 reality, the role of Big Pharma in our lives, and about conspiracy theorists, while also barely scratching the surface on any one subject, and offering enough counter-arguments to his own arguments that the script ends up saying nothing.
The movie questions the ideology of both characters, trying to avoid putting any labels (other than contradiction) on them as not to have specific comparisons to the real world. Teddy confesses he’s “tried it all,” from alt-right, Marxism, “alt-lite,” without feeling like he belonged with any of them.
He even calls universities a scam “for laundering privilege.” But there is no going around the fact that Teddy is nevertheless presented in a manner that explicitly resembles primarily alt-right conspiracy theorists who have done irreparable damage to our culture and society.
Bugonia is driven by Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, but it’s still lost.
Michelle is also no innocent lamb, as she is still the head of a biomedical company, and her company’s role in Teddy’s mom ending up in a coma should give the audience sympathy toward Teddy, but the fact that she is still being kidnapped and tortured by a nutjob who thinks there are aliens among us muddies that complexity.
Though seeing Plemons and Stone share the screen and try to undermine one another — Teddy with his “proof” of alien tampering with the planet, Michelle by exposing Teddy’s resentment and loneliness — it doesn’t help that the film could have been more engaging without its two-hour runtime.
A shorter film could, perhaps, arrive at a conclusion or a point faster, but as it stands, the pacing becomes a big issue as Lanthimos overcomplicates his messaging with enough ambiguity regarding who or what he’s supporting that there is simply nothing there to say.
Bugonia features two powerhouse performances from Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, but it complicates itself too much by trying to maintain ambiguity in its explorations of rogue vigilantism and conspiracy theorists. In a post-2020 world, it results in poor pacing and a muddled message.
Bugonia screened as a part of Fantastic Fest 2025’s Secret Screening programming slate.
