{"id":13350,"date":"2025-11-01T15:58:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T19:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13350"},"modified":"2025-12-23T17:44:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T22:44:21","slug":"bugonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/11\/01\/bugonia\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugonia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bugonia <\/strong>(2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 118 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (bloody violent content including a suicide, grisly images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Yorgos Lanthimos\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Will Tracy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jerskin Fendrix\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robbie Ryan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 24, 2025 (US, limited)\/October 31, 2025 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone, Cedric Dumornay.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is an acquired taste. He established that early on with Dogtooth (2009) and continued the trend with The Lobster (2015), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) and Poor Things (2023), all bearing his unique signature style. I haven\u2019t enjoyed all of his films, but I admire his artistic bravery. He\u2019s got balls!<\/p>\n

\u00a0YL\u2019s latest work Bugonia<\/strong> is freaking INSANE! It\u2019s a twisted hybrid of sci-fi, dark comedy and kidnap thriller. A remake of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green planet, it stars his muse apparent Emma Stone as Michelle Fuller, the high-powered CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. Powerful and affluent, she carries herself at all times with total confidence. There\u2019s not a single crack in her perfect fa\u00e7ade. It stands to reason then that she\u2019s made a few enemies in her ascent to the top of the mountain. One of them, a disturbed beekeeper\/conspiracy theorist named Teddy (Plemons, Killers of the Flower Moon), kidnaps her from her driveway with the help of his neurodivergent cousin Don (Delbis). They take her to their home where they lock her up in the basement and terrorize her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sounds like a fairly standard kidnap thriller, yes? Well, NO! Remember, this is Yorgos Lanthimos we\u2019re talking about. Wait until you hear why Teddy takes Michelle. He\u2019s convinced she\u2019s a member of an alien race called the Andromedans posing as a human. Believing the Andromedans are planning an invasion, he shaves off all her hair so she can\u2019t communicate with the mother ship. What\u2019s his endgame? He wants Michelle to set up a meeting with her alien colleagues so he can negotiate a peace treaty. Supposedly, she\u2019ll be rendezvousing with the mother ship in a few days time during a lunar eclipse. She tries to talk some sense into Teddy, but he\u2019s gone too deep down the rabbit hole to listen to reason.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Teddy\u2019s theory is so preposterous, it can\u2019t be true. He has to be crazy, right? Not necessarily. Therein lies the film\u2019s brilliance. Whereas most directors would establish early on that Teddy is acting on a delusion, YL takes a different road.\u00a0 Working from a screenplay by Will Tracy (The Menu), he presents the story in such a way that makes the viewer think maybe Teddy is onto something. Yes, the whole alien thing sounds like the ravings of a madman, but is it? Could he be right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Michelle talks a good game trying to convince an increasingly agitated Teddy she\u2019s not an alien, maybe too good a game. There\u2019s something a little odd about her behavior. Listen to how she speaks. She\u2019s uncommonly fluent in her speech and there\u2019s a noticeable lack of emotion. It could be argued that this is typical of corporate boss types, but is that what this is? It might also be an alien trying to imitate human behavior. YL doesn\u2019t commit to either thing leaving the viewer in a state of unknowingness. Some will be put off by this, no doubt. Others, like me, will love it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It may not seem like a whole lot is going on in Bugonia<\/strong>. It isn\u2019t filled with action and mayhem. It\u2019s light on special effects. Most of it takes place in the basement where Teddy interrogates Michelle while Don stands at the ready with a rifle. These scenes brim with quiet but palpable intensity. There\u2019s an undercurrent of danger flowing just beneath the surface. The tension is broken by occasional bursts of bloody violence. It\u2019s actually cathartic. YL, aided by cinematographer Robbie Ryan (Poor Things), films these scenes in a way (i.e. different camera angles) that speaks to the shifting powers dynamics between the two. Teddy is ostensibly the one in charge, but Michelle effortlessly and consistently gains the upper hand with her superior intelligence. He\u2019s got the gun, but she\u2019s got the brains. It\u2019s hardly an even match-up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Production designer James Price is another MVP here. What he does with the film\u2019s aesthetic is artistic brilliance. Check out the contrast between the places Michelle and Teddy call home. She resides in a cold, sterile modernist house with no personality while he\u2019s in one of old, lived-in place that just screams danger lives here. It says so much about the characters and their respective states of mind. The lighting further augments the sense that they all reside in some version of hell.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Stone turns in another great performance as Michelle, a woman of power with a cold and indifferent demeanor. Her words to employees say they have the right to leave on time. Her passive-aggressive tone tells them she expects them to stay and work late. She nails the role perfectly. Plemons is equally great as Teddy, an unstable type dealing with a mother (Silverstone, Clueless) left comatose by a failed drug trial funded by Michelle\u2019s company. Delbis, who really is on the autism spectrum, makes an astonishing debut as the accomplice who doesn\u2019t fully grasp what\u2019s going on. He just does what he\u2019s told.<\/p>\n

\u00a0More than anything, Bugonia<\/strong> is an angry film. It\u2019s angry at humanity, what we do to each other and what we\u2019ve done to the planet. YL uses bees and a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder as a metaphor for the human race and where we\u2019re headed if things don\u2019t change. It\u2019s a bit of a reach, but okay. I love that YL isn\u2019t afraid to lean into the irrationality of it all. He taps right into the insane, cluttered mind of the antagonist and runs wildly with it. Bugonia<\/strong> is brilliantly bonkers!\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bugonia (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 118 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (bloody violent content including a suicide, grisly images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Yorgos Lanthimos\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Will Tracy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jerskin Fendrix\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robbie Ryan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 24, 2025 (US, limited)\/October 31, 2025 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone, Cedric Dumornay. Rating: **** […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,20,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-sci-fi-fantasy","category-weird-ones"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Bugonia-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C885&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13353,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13350\/revisions\/13353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}