Over the past several years, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone have forged the kind of creative partnership that recalls Scorsese and De Niro, or Kurosawa and Mifune, a collaboration where director and actor operate on the same peculiar wavelength. After acclaimed pairings like The Favourite and Poor Things — the latter of which garnered Stone an Oscar for Best Actress — their latest effort, Bugonia, arrives with the weight of expectation that comes from two consecutive masterworks. While it doesn’t quite scale the same heights as previous projects, it’s a sharp, unsettling film that lands at precisely the right cultural moment.
Based on the 2003 Korean cult film Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia follows Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a conspiracy-addled beekeeper who lives in a ramshackle farmhouse with his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Convinced that pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Stone) is actually an alien sent to destroy humanity, Teddy enlists Don in a scheme to kidnap Michelle and force her to contact her extraterrestrial overlords. What follows is a hostage thriller that finds absurdist comedy in watching two ill-prepared captors struggle to maintain control over a woman who practices martial arts and downs vitamins like breath mints, all while exploring the very real phenomenon of people disappearing down online rabbit holes and emerging as radicalized true believers.
The film arrives at a moment when conspiracy theories have migrated from the fringes of society to the mainstream of American discourse. Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy (of Succession and The Menu fame) understand that the danger of believing in conspiracies like Pizzagate, QAnon, and “Jewish space lasers” isn’t just that it’s divorced from reality, but that it often stems from legitimate grievances that have been twisted beyond recognition. Teddy has genuine reasons to be angry: his mother lies in a coma after participating in a botched drug trial conducted by Michelle’s company, and his work as a package scanner at that same company offers no path to a better life. But his rage has curdled into something unrecognizable, a worldview so detached from reality that violence becomes not just justified but necessary.
I’ve watched this happen to people in my own life, seen them gradually isolate themselves as they “other” anyone who refuses to accept their increasingly unhinged beliefs. It’s both tragic and terrifying, and Bugonia captures that descent with an uncomfortable level of accuracy. Despite his bumbling kidnapping attempt, Teddy isn’t some cartoonish villain — he’s articulate, intelligent, and capable of citing chapter and verse to support his theories. He’s also completely gone, a man who has sacrificed everything (including, we learn, his own fertility) in service of a mission that exists only in his fractured mind.
Plemons, one of Hollywood’s most consistently interesting actors, transforms himself physically into the embodiment of conspiracy culture’s casualties. With stringy hair, a gaunt frame, and the complexion of someone who spends too much time indoors staring at screens, he shuffles through scenes with a calm, almost gentle demeanor that occasionally erupts into terrifying rage. This is a man who believes he’s humanity’s last hope, and Plemons makes us understand how someone could arrive at such a deranged conclusion without ever winking at the audience.
Stone, unsurprisingly, is phenomenal as Michelle, a CEO fluent in using intellect and language to obscure unpleasant truths. Early in the film, she records an HR video about workplace flexibility, cheerfully explaining that employees are free to leave at 5:30 p.m. before adding that anyone who chooses to stay later would be doing great work — a passive-aggressive masterclass that will ring painfully true to anyone who’s ever worked in corporate America. Stone spends most of the film bald (she actually shaved her head for the role) and clad in a bathrobe , and there’s something unsettling about watching her stripped of the polished glamour that usually defines her public persona, reduced to a hostage covered in antihistamine cream (which Teddy believes suppresses her alien powers) while she tries to talk her way to freedom.
Special mention must be made of Aidan Delbis, making his acting debut as Don. Delbis, who is autistic, brings a genuine vulnerability to the role of Teddy’s cousin, a young man who clearly doesn’t fully grasp the severity of what they’re doing but goes along out of loyalty and a desperate need to belong. That he holds his own opposite two of the most accomplished actors working today speaks to both his talent and Lanthimos’ skill at drawing out authentic performances. Also impressive is comedian Stavros Halkias as Casey, a local cop with an uncomfortable history with Teddy. Their scenes together crackle with a particular brand of awkward tension that adds yet another layer to the film’s examination of power dynamics.
The kidnapping sequence is absurdist comedy at its finest, with neither would-be assailant prepared for the ferocity with which Michelle defends herself, and a later dinner table scene builds slow-burn tension until Teddy finally snaps in spectacular fashion. There’s also a pitch-perfect moment involving an office closet that exemplifies the film’s ability to find dark humor in the most unlikely places. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan does excellent work contrasting the cluttered chaos of Teddy’s farmhouse against the sterile, pristine environments Michelle inhabits, a visual representation of the gulf between their worlds.
Of course, Bugonia isn’t for general audiences — Lanthimos’ particular brand of deadpan absurdism remains an acquired taste. But for those willing to meet the film on its own wavelength, it’s a bracingly relevant piece of work that thinks we’re all completely fucked, but at least it confirms the Lanthimos-Stone partnership as one of the most vital in contemporary cinema.