Film Review: Bugonia

Bugonia
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Element Pictures, Square Peg, CJ ENM,
Fruit Tree Enterprises
In Theaters: 10.31.2025

Being a great artist often means finding — and committing to — a voice that no one else could imitate. For better or for worse, there are few filmmakers who have carved out as unmistakable of a voice as Yorgos Lanthimos. With his uncompromising, in-your-face masterpiece, Poor Things, we heard that voice and saw his vision in a way that captivated and bewildered audiences and critics alike. With Bugonia, he once again asserts his singular blend of absurdity, melancholy and moral inquiry, crafting a world where human behavior feels both alien and achingly familiar. It’s a film that could only come from Lanthimos — unsettling, darkly funny and alive with his inimitable sense of control and chaos.

In Bugonia, pharmaceutical titan Michelle Fuller (two-time Academy Award winner Emma Stone, La La Land, Poor Things) wakes to find herself imprisoned in the cluttered basement of Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog, Civil War), a warehouse worker turned conspiracy zealot, and his neurodivergent cousin Don (newcomer Aidan Delbis). Convinced she’s an alien infiltrator from the “Andromedans,” Teddy shaves her head because he believes that it blocks her ability to send telepathic signals to her extraterrestrial cohorts and demands that she summons her kind to leave Earth before an impending lunar eclipse, freeing humankind from their alien grip. As Michelle manipulates, bargains and fights to survive, we learn through flashbacks about Teddy’s tragic link to Auxolith, Michelle’s company. When Casey (Stavros Halkias, Call of Cthulhu), a local cop who was once Teddy’s babysitter, comes sniffing around, things start to escalate quickly. Before long, the moment of truth — or something like truth — is at hand.

Bugonia immediately establishes itself as an intriguing story full of enigmatic and oddly fascinating characters; almost as quickly, it establishes itself as quirkily comic, quite unsettling and often unpleasant. This isn’t a big surprise — you don’t go to a Yorgos Lanthimos film if you’re not prepared to feel a bit uncomfortable — but it’s somehow more on the nose than Poor Things is in terms of hitting you over the head with some of its weightier themes, yet it also feels much less sure of what it’s trying to say. The screenplay by Will Tracy (The Menu) has plenty of memorable lines and some great character interplay, but it lacks the inspired quality and sense of polish of Tony McNamara’s work on The Favourite and Poor Things. The film is frequently meandering, if rarely dull. While the back and forth between Teddy and Michelle is quite entertaining at times, watching a woman being held captive by two very unstable men (and at times becoming the victim of violence) for the length of a feature film is hard to take, especially in what is ostensibly a comedy. It’s rooted in allegory and social commentary, from the title’s reference to decay and renewal to mining the subject of paranoia for laughs and for tragedy. 

What begins as a captivity thriller spirals into a grim parable about faith, guilt and human ruin — the question is whether the aliens are real, or if the monsters were always us. It’s compelling, but at times, it’s simply too bleak and sad to land as comedy (the subplot about Teddy being sexually abused by the babysitter is a big one), but it’s too deliberately silly to be called a drama. It’s an ambitiously pitch-black satire that should land effectively with enthusiastic fans, and it kept me involved throughout. Still, even as an admirer of the artist’s work, I left the movie wanting to like it more and be able to recommend it more wholeheartedly than I’m able to do.

The acting is first-rate, with Stone commanding the screen in the electrifying way that only she can. The best comedic moments come whenever she tries to gain the upper hand in the situation through her unflappable ability to talk her way through anything, and her willingness to say whatever she thinks Teddy wants to hear from her. Plemons has gone through a major physical transformation (having lost 50 pounds) and though he vividly creates a sad and pathetic character and there’s no flaw in his performance, I couldn’t get into the character. Delbis does stellar work and makes for a compelling screen presence.

Bugonia is a very well-made and brilliantly acted film, and if you’re a Lanthimos fan, you won’t want to miss it. That being said, it’s certainly not the crossover movie that is going to appeal to people outside of his fanbase, and even some within it will be scratching their heads. I’ll add the caveat that it may be a movie that becomes more profound upon repeat viewing, but the truth is that I can’t see myself ever watching it again. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Stitch Head
Film Review: Ballad of a Small Player