This review is based on a screening which took place at the 2025 Fantastic Fest Film Festival. Bugonia will receive a limited theatrical release in the United States on October 24, followd by a wide release on October 31.
In Bugonia, Greek absurdist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos interrogates the nightmare that is conspiracy echo chambers. The movie, with a script by The Menu’s Will Tracy, is a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean black horror-comedy, Save the Green Planet!...but for the everyday moviegoer, that won’t matter. It’s anxious, unstable, and edges us with alien invasion paranoia until an ending that counteracts the commentaries already laid at our feet. Not those about humanity, mind you – we know where we stand in the universe – but more about keyboard warriors who disassociate themselves from reality. Some will be left guffawing at brilliant production design and trademark Lanthimos weirdness, but for others like myself, the film will leave a sour taste.
Emma Stone stars as Michelle Fuller, an uptight CEO for the major pharmaceutical company, Auxolith, and she’s about to have a terrible few days. Teddy, played magnificently by Jesse Plemons, kidnaps Michelle because he thinks she’s an Andromedan visitor who is trying to study humanity and colonize Earth (or something along those lines; his strung-out jargon is nonstop). Plemons’ conspiracy-drenched beekeeper and his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), intend to hold Michelle in basement captivity until the lunar eclipse, when they think her spaceship will visit Earth. Now, all they need from Michelle is a confession and her true identity, if she is indeed extraterrestrial royalty.
The central conflict pits Teddy against what he believes to be a shapeshifter. Don’t get me wrong, Michelle isn’t innocent; she’s responsible for drug trials that possibly harmed Teddy’s mother, Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), and cultivates a culture of workplace enslavement that is the problem with modern corporate oppression. But that doesn’t mean she’s an outer-space officer experimenting with Earthlings for a host of possible uses. Teddy isn’t convinced, however, which allows Plemons to vanish inside an incel chatroom theorist type.
What Bugonia says about haunting online feedback loops is worth introspection. We live in a reality where anyone’s farthest-flung ideas can find a community; the cult of Reddit forum prophets is stronger than ever. Plemons’ dedication to an insane, red-pilled cause is lost to an encyclopedic knowledge of unfounded crackpot op-eds without fact checks. And yet, information no longer requires reason, because humans only seek validation. That insecurity, as our own civilization crumbles, is projected onto Teddy as he refuses to accept that his mother might be dying purely because life is cruel and our bodies fail us. But that doesn’t make for a thrilling back-and-forth, so his delusions become someone else’s problem.
Michelle embodies everything selfish and parasitic from the top down about our capitalist hellscape. Her combative logic first gets under Teddy’s skin, and the proverbial game is afoot. As a head-shaved and antihistamine-slathered Michelle adjusts her approach to slyly suggest she is indeed this Andromedan spy, Teddy reacts with an engaging honesty that only gets even more curious and sad. Don’s input is that of a blank and moldable mind who trusts a loved one, which injects some humor, and there’s moderate tension as Michelle tries to outwit her witless captor. The mystery of whether or not some cosmic scheme is underway hangs with a small but looming question mark, keeping Lanthimos’ “what ifs” intriguing enough…until the end, that is.
For whatever commentary is achieved, a shocking swerve takes the film into both jarring and yet counterproductively detrimental new realms. Whether or not it’s in line with Jang Joon-hwan’s original horror-comedy doesn’t matter; it’s about this Americanization’s journey. Perhaps it’s current societal conditions, where this type of wi-fi-enabled brainwashing has increased with ease due to technology, but the staying power of Bugonia blasts away to another planet. The trio of warring actors, plus Stavros Halkias as a cake-munching local police officer, can sustain a slower pace until this point, but then the rug is pulled in an unfortunate way.