Bugonia Review
Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest collaboration with muse Emma Stone is a bleak sci-fi comedy that feels very of-the-moment.
(L-R) Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis, and Jesse Plemons in Bugonia. Credit: Focus Features
Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia, written by Will Tracy (The Menu), is an English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 Korean dark comedy Save the Green Planet! More than two decades later, this story about conspiracy theories and corporate greed feels even more relevant.
Conspiracy-obsessed beekeeper Teddy (Jesse Plemons) kidnaps high-powered pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone). Teddy is convinced that Michelle is an alien from Alpha Centauri and that he can save the Earth by forcing her to take him to her mothership.
Emma Stone in Bugonia. Credit: Focus Features
It sounds absurd, and it is. But Teddy's mindset feels uncomfortably familiar in 2025. He's “done his own research” down pseudoscientific rabbit holes, constructed an elaborate worldview from internet forums and crackpot podcasts, and now uses vague signs to treat another human being as an alien. He ridiculously shaves a woman’s head and covers her in antihistamine cream to prevent her from “phoning home.” In 2003, this registered as darkly comic absurdism. Today, it feels sadly plausible that someone could behave like this. I could imagine this being a thing on Elon Musk’s X in today’s world of post-truth online radicalization, where conspiracy has become mainstream.
The film also serves as a critique of ruthless capitalism and wealth stratification. Stone's Fuller insincerely tells employees they shouldn't feel "obligated" to stay past 5:30 and buries her company's unethical drug trials with hush money. We live in a world where billionaires are consolidating wealth and exerting unchecked political influence while seeming indifferent to human suffering. Plemons’ and Stone’s characters are alien to each other in our stratified society.
Jesse Plemons in Bugonia. Credit: Focus Features
Both Plemons and Stone deliver powerhouse performances, their confrontations tense and riveting as Teddy's rage threatens to erupt. Newcomer Aidan Delbis adds heart as Don, Teddy's neurodivergent cousin and reluctant accomplice, whose presence reveals how Teddy practices the same manipulation he accuses Michelle of employing.
Bugonia joins the trend of shooting on VistaVision, with cinematographer Robbie Ryan using the technology to shoot 95% of the film. With VistaVision, a precursor to IMAX, 35mm film runs horizontally through specialized cameras, combining two standard four-performation 35mm frames into a single frame for increased resolution. The result in Bugonia is an incredibly lush picture, made to feel even more special by its unusual 1.50:1 aspect ratio.
Emma Stone in Bugonia. Credit: Focus Features
Bugonia stands as one of Lanthimos' most accessible films without sacrificing his distinctive bite. Though bleak, it's also precisely calibrated for this moment as a film that understands we're living in a world rife with conspiracy and corporate malfeasance. He's made something that speaks directly to our current post-truth reality. The film is made all the better by Lanthimos’ uncanny ability to create something both genuinely unsettling and darkly funny at the same time, a quality that makes him one of the most exciting cinema auteurs working today.
Bugonia opened in theaters on October 31, 2005.
