Bugonia (2025)

Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons shine in a bleak, grisly dark comedy

Yorgos Lanthimos has a knack for world-building. Whatever your relationship with his work — I fall somewhere in the middle of the love/hate spectrum — he has always had a clear vision for the universe in which he constructs his films. His two most prestigious films, 2018’s The Favourite and 2023’s Poor Things take place in times and/or places unfamiliar to the world in which we live today. They’re disorienting, and that’s part of what makes them fascinating.

Even those more grounded in reality, such as 2015’s The Lobster or his most recent release, 2024’s Kinds of Kindness, only look like the world we know, but are riddled with absurdities that render the similarities moot.

All of that makes Bugonia arguably Lanthimos’s most realistic film to date, a statement that is absurd in and of itself but also, given the perceived message of the film, unfathomably sad.

Bugonia is, first and foremost, a showcase of two of the industry’s brightest young stars. “Young” might be a stretch when talking about Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons — it’s been 18 years since Superbad and 14 since the end of Friday Night Lights — but both have carved out careers that make it unsurprising to see them in “prestige” films. Stone, of course, is already a two-time Best Actress Oscar winner, while Plemons has a nomination and seemingly shows up in top contenders on more than an annual basis.

A majority of the film features these two talents verbally sparring, and it’s riveting. Plemons’s Teddy and his autistic cousin (Aidan Delbis) plan and execute a kidnapping of Stone’s Michelle, a powerful CEO of a major company, believing her to be a literal alien from outer space. They shave her head, cover her entire body in antihistamine cream (both of which to prevent her from communicating with her mothership), and begin interrogating her with the goal of getting on her mothership, where they will negotiate with the alien emperor to save the human race from annihilation.

These scenes make up a large portion of the film and are really specifically and impeccably lit shots. Plemons is terrifyingly conspiracy-piled, with Stone alternating between pleading and methodically manipulative. The verbal sparring is captivating, and are what I’ll remember most about Bugonia.

Lanthimos has established credentials for films with messaging that is somehow simultaneously subtle while also hitting you over the head with a shovel, and this may be his bleakest message to date. We’ve seen quite a few films of late dealing with the death of society or a hopeless future for our planet, but none that I’ve seen have been so comically conspicuous as Bugonia. There are no protagonists here. Everyone is a villain and everything that’s being done is leading to the impending doom lurking right around the corner. Is it a message about climate change? The poisoning of brains via internet conspiracy theorists? Greedy capitalists? Yes, yes, and yes.

Co-written by Will Tracy, who most notably wrote 2022’s The Menu, this film deals with dark topics in a heavy-handed way, balancing black comedy with grisly violence, and absurdity. It’s message is both subtle and overt. It’s a difficult balancing act to progress a story and keep the audience invested in a film with character truly worth rooting for, and Bugonia achieves this via the suspense that’s oozing out of every scene. Many films follow a familiar plot line that looks like a roller coaster, dipping up and down, up and down, but Bugonia starts at the ground and only goes up. It’s not an altogether unfamiliar plot device, but it only works if it knows where it’s going and what it wants to achieve, and Bugonia clearly does.

Lanthimos is said to be taking a break from filmmaking following the release of this film, which is probably not the worst idea considering his workload over the last couple of years. If we’re left without a Lanthimos film for a couple of years, he’s leaving us with maybe his best work to date. Bugonia succeeds for a lot of reasons. The acting, the suspense, the subtle but also obvious messaging. But more than anything, it succeeds because of a director with a clear vision and the gall to follow through with it.