Bugonia Review

This reappraisal is based connected a screening which took spot astatine the 2025 Fantastic Fest Film Festival. Bugonia volition person a constricted theatrical merchandise successful the United States connected October 24, followd by a wide merchandise connected October 31.

In Bugonia, Greek absurdist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos interrogates the nightmare that is conspiracy echo chambers. The movie, with a publication by The Menu’s Will Tracy, is simply a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean achromatic horror-comedy, Save the Green Planet!...but for the mundane moviegoer, that won’t matter. It’s anxious, unstable, and edges america with alien penetration paranoia until an ending that counteracts the commentaries already laid astatine our feet. Not those astir humanity, caput you – we cognize wherever we basal successful the beingness – but much astir keyboard warriors who disassociate themselves from reality. Some volition beryllium near guffawing astatine superb accumulation plan and trademark Lanthimos weirdness, but for others similar myself, the movie volition permission a sour taste.

Emma Stone stars arsenic Michelle Fuller, an uptight CEO for the large pharmaceutical company, Auxolith, and she’s astir to person a unspeakable fewer days. Teddy, played magnificently by Jesse Plemons, kidnaps Michelle due to the fact that helium thinks she’s an Andromedan visitant who is trying to survey humanity and colonize Earth (or thing on those lines; his strung-out jargon is nonstop). Plemons’ conspiracy-drenched beekeeper and his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), mean to clasp Michelle successful basement captivity until the lunar eclipse, erstwhile they deliberation her spaceship volition sojourn Earth. Now, each they request from Michelle is simply a confession and her existent identity, if she is so extraterrestrial royalty.

The cardinal struggle pits Teddy against what helium believes to beryllium a shapeshifter. Don’t get maine wrong, Michelle isn’t innocent; she’s liable for cause trials that perchance harmed Teddy’s mother, Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), and cultivates a civilization of workplace enslavement that is the occupation with modern firm oppression. But that doesn’t mean she’s an outer-space serviceman experimenting with Earthlings for a big of imaginable uses. Teddy isn’t convinced, however, which allows Plemons to vanish wrong an incel chatroom theorist type.

What Bugonia says astir haunting online feedback loops is worthy introspection. We unrecorded successful a world wherever anyone’s farthest-flung ideas tin find a community; the cult of Reddit forum prophets is stronger than ever. Plemons’ dedication to an insane, red-pilled origin is mislaid to an encyclopedic cognition of unfounded crackpot op-eds without information checks. And yet, accusation nary longer requires reason, due to the fact that humans lone question validation. That insecurity, arsenic our ain civilization crumbles, is projected onto Teddy arsenic helium refuses to judge that his parent mightiness beryllium dying purely due to the fact that beingness is cruel and our bodies neglect us. But that doesn’t marque for a thrilling back-and-forth, truthful his delusions go idiosyncratic else’s problem.

Michelle embodies everything selfish and parasitic from the apical down astir our capitalist hellscape. Her combative logic archetypal gets nether Teddy’s skin, and the proverbial crippled is afoot. As a head-shaved and antihistamine-slathered Michelle adjusts her attack to slyly suggest she is so this Andromedan spy, Teddy reacts with an engaging honesty that lone gets adjacent much funny and sad. Don’s input is that of a blank and moldable caput who trusts a loved one, which injects immoderate humor, and there’s mean hostility arsenic Michelle tries to outwit her witless captor. The enigma of whether oregon not immoderate cosmic strategy is underway hangs with a tiny but looming question mark, keeping Lanthimos’ “what ifs” intriguing enough…until the end, that is.

For immoderate commentary is achieved, a shocking swerve takes the movie into some jarring and yet counterproductively detrimental caller realms. Whether oregon not it’s successful enactment with Jang Joon-hwan’s archetypal horror-comedy doesn’t matter; it’s astir this Americanization’s journey. Perhaps it’s existent societal conditions, wherever this benignant of wi-fi-enabled brainwashing has accrued with easiness owed to technology, but the staying powerfulness of Bugonia blasts distant to different planet. The trio of warring actors, positive Stavros Halkias arsenic a cake-munching section constabulary officer, tin prolong a slower gait until this point, but past the rug is pulled successful an unfortunate way.