Review

For the first time in their four collaborations, the director/actor pairing of Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone misses fertile soil. Bugonia, a remake of Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 comedy Save the Green Planet!, proves to be a mismatch of tone and material, with Lanthimos' penchant for darkly comedic weirdness undercutting a story that seems inspired equally by Misery and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As a cat-and-mouse game between captor and victim, the movie has its occasional high points but badly muffs the ending, careening into self-parody during a final 15 minutes awash in masturbatory nihilism.

The underlying conceit isn't without merit and brings to mind the phrase, "Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me." Conspiracy theorists Teddy Gantz (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) are convinced that Big Pharma CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is an alien in disguise. They believe she's part of a race of Andromedans coming to Earth to take over during an upcoming lunar eclipse. To prevent this, they decide to kidnap Michelle and hold her for ransom. Improbably, the first part of their scheme works-but once they have her, they're unsure how to proceed beyond shaving off all her hair (since Teddy believes that's how she communicates with the mother ship). Faced with their lunacy, Michelle initially tries denial but, when that fails, decides to play along.

The lingering question, of course, is whether Michelle really is an alien. Are Teddy and Don complete idiots, or are they onto something? Teddy is clearly not sane, as becomes evident when Michelle stumbles upon evidence of his past activities, but the grounded reason for his anger is eventually revealed. Lanthimos has multiple axes to grind-most revolving around the inhumanity of humans toward one another, with a few sharp barbs reserved for the pharmaceutical industry. The film is being sold as a "black comedy," but there's little actual humor here (not even of the gallows variety). The dramatic elements don't land because none of the three principals are sufficiently humanized. So when the ending arrives-laden with the unfortunate need to overexplain what should have remained ambiguous-it doesn't much matter.

The film's middle section is its strongest, highlighting the psychological duel between Teddy and Michelle, with the latter shackled and victimized during a torture/interrogation sequence that bleeds into a dinner conversation. There are genuine hints of tension during these scenes and, to the extent that Lanthimos finds his footing, it happens here. Still, I couldn't help but wonder what an alternate version might have looked like-one directed by someone with a real grasp of claustrophobic suspense (say, John Carpenter in his prime). This is one time when Lanthimos' tendencies toward David Lynchian weirdness undercuts the material.

Emma Stone is excellent, playing Michelle with just enough ambiguity that we're never quite sure what's going on in her head. At times, she seems willing to do anything to survive. At others, we're not so sure. The role is physically demanding. Although Stone keeps her clothing on (for the first time in her four films with Lanthimos), her character endures a fair amount of pain and degradation. Jesse Plemons, looking like an unwashed hippie left over from the 1960s, makes for an intense foil-though, to be fair, he was scarier during his scene-stealing Civil War cameo.

If this represents Lanthimos' view of humanity, he's in a dark place. The world he sketches in Bugonia deserves whatever it does to itself. The misanthropy that percolates throughout robs the film of emotional accessibility, narrative cohesion, and even basic enjoyability. There are moments of brilliance, but overall this is a bit of a chore-and the ending renders the whole enterprise kind of pointless. Of the director's six English-language films, this is his biggest misstep and the one I've liked the least.

© 2025 James Berardinelli

Synopsis

Two conspiracy obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

Playing At

• Belcourt Theatre
  2102 Belcourt Avenue, Nashville, TN
• Regal Green Hills
  3815 Greenhills Village Drive, Nashville, TN
• Regal Opry Mills
  570 Opry Mills Drive, Nashville, TN
• AMC DINE-IN Thoroughbred 20
  633 Frazier Drive, Franklin, TN