Bugonia
Rating
Director
Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenplay
Will Tracy
Length
1h 58m
Starring
Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone
MPAA Rating
R
Original Preview
Review
Can a film be bonkers without having a theme to support it? Bugonia gives the idea a try.
Emma Stone stars as Michelle Fuller, a powerful pharmaceutical CEO whose vanity and self-interest lay superficially across an emotionless character, one who seems more interested in employing the latest HR jargon to suggest she cares about her employees, than in actually ensuring those under her are safe and secure. It’s here where the film’s main theme seems intended to emerge. The notion of soulless corporate entities trying to control narratives could be a potent one if it weren’t subsumed in a story about conspiracy theorist Teddy (Jesse Plemons) who believes her to be an alien sent to subvert and use the human race for her own ends.
When Teddy teams up with Don (Aidan Delbis), his autistic cousin, to carry out a kidnapping operation against the CEO to force her to confess to being the alien they know her to be, the film starts to shift away from the ideas of corporate malfeasance into conspiratorial thinking and its deleterious effects. Even then, that concept doesn’t make it all the way to the end of the film, giving itself back over to the corporate malignance angle, exposing a relative of Teddy’s who had been affected by a particularly dangerous drug.
The cat and mouse game between Michelle and Teddy shifts in power dynamic throughout the film with the upper hand never fully shifting between the two. Michelle is smart enough to deflect his seemingly crazy notions and cunning enough to manipulate his cousin but Teddy’s willingness to kill to keep her from escaping or from denying her alien origins keeps her locked in his custody.
Although the story is a bit insane at times, it isn’t until the final third of the film that things start going off the rails and writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos’s personality begins to emerge. Until that moment, the picture feels like something nearly any filmmaker could put together but simply by knowing Lanthimos’s mind (from experience with The Lobster or Poor Things), the finale becomes fairly predictable. It’s a twist that feels incredibly obvious. Matter of fact, fans of Lanthimos should be able to pick up the twist as early as the first act with the rest picking up on it in the second.
Even if the theme shifts back-and-forth and the film’s intent moves into murky territory, the ride to get to the end is an entertaining one. Stone and Plemons are performing near perfectly. Stone’s dialogue cadence is familiar and fitting to the lunacy surrounding her while Plemons takes a different tack, giving us a performance that feels alien to him and that is at least a humorous twist on our expectations.
Bugonia doesn’t care if you don’t see a purpose to the film’s existence. It does somewhat stick the landing on the “alien” nature of self-absorbed corporate goons but it requires understanding the complex final scenes. Audiences can certainly enjoy the journey even if it never matters in the end. Although the main twist is easy to spot, the final segment, overlaid with Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” sung by Marlene Dietrich, will still be a bit of a surprise. That might well be the best reason to stay to the end.
Review Written
March 18, 2026
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