Bugonia

Many filmmakers at the top of their game with their pick of actors and a long leash of creativity take their time: Scorsese, Spielberg, Fincher, Villeneuve, the Andersons. You’re typically waiting a few years between new efforts from any of them these days. Yorgos Lanthimos, who has quickly joined their ranks, does not make us wait. For the third time in as many years, Lanthimos has directed a new film. For the third straight year, Lanthimos’ film is one of the year’s most creative, arresting, and unsettling.

It’s been a decade since Greek filmmaker Lanthimos’ English language debut The Lobster premiered at Cannes. Bugonia is his sixth English feature as director-producer in that period and his fourth in a row to star Emma Stone, who has fully embraced her muse status. In this rich and celebrated era, Lanthimos has drawn from various sources: novels, history, his own dark mind. This time out, he remakes the little-known 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet! with an in-the-moment screenplay by former The Onion editor-in-chief turned The Menu screenwriter Will Tracy.

The lean narrative focuses on a disgruntled man who hatches and executes an abduction of his company’s rich and powerful CEO with the help of his malleable cousin. The film opens with images of bees pollinating flowers and voiceover ensures you do not miss the potent metaphor. Our chief abductor, Teddy (Jesse Plemons), is a hobby beekeeper and he is upset with the conditions that have endangered that creature as well as the societal imbalance that sees One-Percenters like pharmaceutical executive Michelle Fuller (Stone) living in luxury while the masses toil endlessly without making ends meet. Such commentary would be relevant at any point in modern history, but it seems especially timely in 2025.

Like all of Lanthimos’ work, Bugonia is dark, bleak, and bitingly funny. There is nothing subtle about the social commentary, but Lanthimos and Tracy have no pretense of making discoveries or enlightening the general public. They only imbue their tense thriller with real world relevance for which there is no true substitute.

Teddy and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) sneak onto Fuller’s estate, capture her with much difficulty, drug her, shave her head, and tie her up in the basement of their run-down rural home. Teddy explains that Fuller is an alien determined to destroy the planet and that without her hair, her extraterrestrial contacts cannot track her. With crackpot conspiracy theories driving the plot, you can’t help but wonder how this is all going to play out.

As you probably could predict, it plays out with considerable suspense, darkly funny moments, and plenty of shock and subversion. Lanthimos has not budged from the preferred tone he established even before he began working with English like the 2009 Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee Dogtooth. The director takes an unflinching eye to humans’ ugly nature and gets some pretty terrific drama and entertainment out of it.

Unlike many directors who make a big splash and then follow up with variations on their themes to diminishing returns, Lanthimos seems to grow more confident and cinematic every time he steps behind the camera. Poor Things earned Stone a somewhat surprising second Best Actress Oscar and cemented the director as a visionary. The raves and accolades have done nothing to change either the filmmaker or the muse, who remain steadfast in their belief in making challenging, skin-crawling cinema whose achievements skew far more artistic than commercial. Their dark collaborations have shaped Stone’s second calling as a producer behind some of the decade’s most creative films and television, including last year’s A Real Pain and I Saw the TV Glow.

The final act of Bugonia will divide those who haven’t been put off by the dark storytelling up until then. If you haven’t seen the original movie, you are in for a surprise. Without spoiling anything, I will say the jaw-dropping finale reminded me of a complete reversal of the life-affirming end to 2005’s underrated The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Lanthimos’ conclusion drips with acidic wit and utter resentment for the human race. It would have greatly upset me at a younger, more sensitive age, but I have been around long enough to appreciate where the sentiments of this bonkers exclamation point of an ending have formed.

It’s tough to predict how the industry receives Bugonia after embracing many but not all of Lanthimos’ efforts. There is far too much craft on display here — in Stone and Plemons’ lead performances, in Lanthimos’ direction, in Tracy’s screenwriting, and Robbie Ryan’s stunning 1.5:1 VistaVision compositions — to discount the film’s award season chances. The timing, festival buzz, and strong limited bow on the coasts all point to big recognition in spite of a presentation that many will find off-putting. The film expands this Friday, giving open-minded moviegoers an unforgettable mix of tricks and treats.