Bugonia

by Chris Stewart 11.2025

Teddy is not a happy man. He rides his bike here and there, a known figure in town, perpetually  in need of a shower, polite enough with his coworkers, but simmering with discontent. He freely makes the kinds of “things are gonna change, soon – in a big way!” comments that people brush off because, well, that's Teddy. In his homestead, Teddy and his neurodivergent cousin Don keep bees, discuss the future of the world, and, mostly, prepare for Teddy's big project – the kidnapping of a CEO whom he is certain is an alien. 

Yorgos Lanthimos is here to agitate in this satirical drama. To probe us. Viewers will feel prodded, pricked, and provoked. As for motivated, challenged, or elated? Only in a vapory, fading kind of way. It's a powerful draught to drink, but it wears off before too long.

Lanthimos trades in high-art slapstick. His brand is familiar – tracking shots filmed with wide-angle or even fisheye lenses, characters who openly declare their absurd worldview in stilted, arch ways. Silly dances (here, a physical training routine fills in for these). Script-wise, it's a cute meta-textual gag that Lanthimos, whose films have featured inhuman-sounding dialogue, is working here from Will Tracy's natural-voiced script, even as the plot revolves around someone accused of being a literal alien.

As for the suspected extraterrestrial, and the film's key satire: Can you imagine someone so powerful, so icy, so detached that they lord over us common homo sapiens while sipping their strangely-colored concoctions, utilizing advanced technology to counteract aging, and living in futuristic homes? Michelle Fuller, played by the excellent-as-always Emma Stone, is, purposefully, something like a teenager's concept of a powerful CEO. Mistress of her domain. Her day is crisply regimented.

Teddy (a brilliant, tangibly-addled Jesse Plemons) and the sweet-natured, compliant Don (the compelling Aiden Delbis) will spend the film with a kidnapped Michelle in their home, carrying out an ornately dingy interrogation. Waiting for her to break and admit that she is here on an Andromedan mission. Teddy's explanation of this, of what her mission is, and of what any of it has to do with humanity as a whole is shabby but not vague, and his internal conviction is total. As Ms. Fuller unearths some of his history during her counter-interrogation, and his deeper motivations emerge, as well as what drives her, we move into stickier and stickier territory. Somebody is bound to get hurt.

To what degree does Lanthimos want we, the viewer, to hurt? To be angry? To perhaps look at the people to our left and right with a little more humanity? In this terrifically-directed, brisk little parable; I'm not sure if he's taken the time to settle on the answer to that. There's nothing wrong with a bit of fun, and when he swerves, it is in both darker and goofier directions. It's somewhat exhausting. Never quite excitingly messy, but awfully ready to spray us with dirt and goop.

Bugonia

Run Time: 120 minutes

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos