Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025, Ireland/UK/Canada/South Korea/USA)

Bugonia is a noteworthy return to form for director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose prior successes, including Poor Things, were done with the collaboration of Australian playwright and screenwriter Tony McNamara. We have been in the Emma Stone phase of Lanthimos’s career for roughly a decade now, and it seems that Bugonia marks a new chapter in their collaboration. In many respects, the film represents a marriage of the director’s earlier style (see films such as Dogtooth) with the prestige of high-caliber Hollywood stars. In this case, Emma Stone is joined by Jesse Plemons, who also appeared in Lanthimos’s prior film, the anthology Kinds of Kindness.

An adaptation of the Korean film Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia centers on conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Plemons), who, along with his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), decides to kidnap the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company - Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone). The central premise of the film is that Teddy believes Michelle is an alien who is aiming to force all human beings into subservience. Whether or not Fuller is an actual alien is something that will be revealed by the end of the film, but this debate creates the narrative propulsion.

Lanthimos’s world in Bugonia is unrelentingly grim, and the film might even be a bit much for his fans. Yet there is a lot of humor in the film, mostly in the interactions between Stone and Plemons. Comedian Stavros Halkias also makes an appearance as the local police officer. One of the highlights of the film is Aidan Delbis as Don, who seems to be the film’s emotional core and also its most sympathetic character. Bugonia is many things, but it is hardly uninteresting, and it will leave audiences guessing until its finale - and maybe even beyond the finale. Bugonia is a solid effort from Lanthimos.

8/10