‘Bugonia’ review: Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are dynamite in explosive Yorgos Lanthimos thriller

Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos. UK. 2025. 118mins

In a world of faux information, simply what can — and may — you imagine? Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos takes that straightforward, painfully resonant thought and runs with it in a movie that proves by turns hilarious, grotesque and sharply satirical. Lanthimos regulars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are terrific as two people on reverse sides of an ideological chasm, and there’s an excessive amount of the macabre playfulness of earlier Lanthimos works. However the movie’s grounding in a nightmarish actuality provides it a directness which propels the narrative, and makes its wickedly leftfield denouement all of the extra satisfying.

  A critical message delivered in typical Lanthimos type

Premiering in Venice competitors, Bugonia comes scorching on the heels of Varieties Of Kindness, which debuted at Cannes in 2024 (successful Plemons Greatest Actor), and Poor Issues, which received the Venice Golden Lion in 2023 earlier than taking house 4 Oscars, together with Greatest Actress for Stone. (Lanthimos’s 2018 function The Favorite additionally received star Olivia Colman an Oscar in 2018.) This newest work is a extra simple, scaled-down Lanthimos – it’s basically a chamber piece with three gamers – however retains the director’s absurdist outlook and long-standing fascination with energy, isolation and management. (It additionally shares one thing of a thematic sensibility with the latest Eddington, whose director, Ari Aster, produces right here.) Lanthimos’ rising legion of followers actually received’t be dissatisfied when Bugonia rolls out globally via Common from October 31, and Stone and Plemons may discover themselves in one other awards dialog.

The movie opens with a disorienting mix of dischordant tones and the buzzing of bees, foreshadowing the themes of paranoia and pure steadiness (or imbalance) which concern Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy – who was impressed by 2023 South Korean function Save The Inexperienced Planet and wrote the script throughout the Covid19 pandemic. Certainly, the movie takes its identify from the traditional Mediterranean perception that bees had been generated from a cow’s carcass.

Deep within the rural American heartland (really shot on an property within the English countryside), Teddy (Plemons) is an newbie apiarist on the run-down house he shares together with his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). The native space has the air of a as soon as vibrant neighborhood fallen on laborious instances. A direct connection is made with this ailing city and the plight of the bees who, as Teddy explains in voice over, are important to our environmental well being, and are dying out in report numbers.

Teddy believes that the duty for this pure genocide lays squarely on the toes of huge pharmaceutical corporations and their dangerous chemical substances. Decided to redress the steadiness, Teddy convinces Don to assist him kidnap Michelle (Emma Stone), the high-profile CEO of native pharma company Anxolith. After securing Jennifer Aniston face masks to hide their id and indulging in some half-hearted bodily coaching, they by some means handle to seize Michelle and lock her of their basement with the intent of creating her confess “the reality”.

Sadly for Michelle, the reality that Teddy needs to listen to is that she is, in truth, an alien from Andromeda, whose race is intent on overthrowing humanity. Hours spent watching YouTube movies and listening to podcasts have intensified Teddy’s conspiracy theories to a violent diploma. He insists that Don shave Michelle’s head – these aliens use their locks to speak with the mothership, he explains – and slather her in antihistamine cream that may block her potential to emotionally management them.

A lady trapped in a basement with two deluded, aggressive males is an uncomfortable set-up acquainted to many horror films, and Lanthimos take enjoyment of taking part in with this trope. In her fifth collaboration with Lanthimos, Stone (who additionally produces) ensures that Michelle isn’t any helpless sufferer. She is ferocious as a poised, meticulous girl, who has whole confidence in her personal intelligence. The truth that the character is meant as an embodiment of the normal beliefs of logic and purpose (and, after all, snug consumerism) could also be apparent, however there’s an class to the way in which through which Stone mines vulnerability after which desperation as Michelle realises these tenets are utterly null and void on this outlandish situation.

For all his ranting and raving, Plemons brings loads of depth to Teddy, a person who has locked himself down within the wake of previous traumas – hinted at in off-kilter flashbacks of an in poor health mom (Alicia Silverstone) and a go to from a creepy former babysitter-turned-local cop – however has lastly discovered the solutions he has been in search of. Teddy can be a sufferer, remoted, missed by society and compelled into motion that, he believes, will save the human race – and himself. Lanthimos is cautious, although, to not give Teddy a simple out for his behaviour. Right here, Don acts as one thing of a bellwether, his interactions with Michelle making him doubt Teddy’s assertions of who she is. He merely doesn’t know what to assume.

Lanthimos needs his audiences to really feel the identical uncertainty, and the movie sustains a scrumptious pressure all through. On this battle of wits between this well-dressed, carefully-controlled girl and this pony-tailed, irrational bumpkin, we all know who we’re supposed to imagine. However can we? Ought to we? The rating from composer Jerskin Fendrix (coming back from Poor Issues and Varieties Of Kindness) amps up this unease. Working with the London Symphony Orchestra, he melds conventional swelling strings with grittier, edgier tones, talking each to Teddy’s heroic ambitions and the soiled truths that lie beneath.

Taking pictures in immersive VistaVision, cinematographer Robbie Ryan (who additionally lensed The Favorite and Poor Issues) captures the messy isolation of Teddy and Don’s house, through which textured ’90s-inspired manufacturing design from James Worth provides the sense of a life on pause. It’s a stark contract with the faceless, futuristic monolith of the Anxolith headquarters and the gleaming modernity of Michelle’s palacial pad. The gulf right here is clearly not simply considered one of ideology; the movie additionally speaks to social fractures attributable to class, privilege and financial alternative.

Finally, although, Bugonia is in regards to the impending apocalypse and the truth that, whether or not it comes via environmental disaster or civil struggle, it’s doubtless fully avoidable. It’s a critical message delivered in sometimes entertaining Lanthimos type and hammered house through a bravura climax which manages to be each gonzo and gut-wrenching in equal measure.