Published December 8, 2025
BY DANIELA FOLEY
With insane emotional conveyance and barbaric scenes, Yorgos Lanthimos’s newest brainchild “Bugonia,” a science fiction and dark comedy concoction, remaking the 2003 South Korean film “Save the Green Planet” and redefining film with a jarring musical score and a divisive ending, along with commentary on the current political state and the importance of humanity.
The opening of the movie follows Teddy (Jesse Plemons), an isolated conspiracy theorist and amateur beekeeper, and Don (Aidan Delbis), his easily manipulated neurodivergent cousin, as they kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), a biomedical CEO girlboss. Convinced that Fuller is an alien intending to destroy humanity, the majority of the film takes place in the basement of Teddy’s childhood home, where Fuller is held captive, shaved bald and relentlessly tortured as the two conspiracy theorists attempt to prove she is an alien who caused Teddy’s mother’s coma-like state and the root of colony collapse disorder destroying bee species, while attempting to force her to bring her “emperor” to negotiate peace between humanity and aliens. Ultimately, the audience is subject to watching horrific dehumanization, intentionally set to be as uncomfortable as possible.
Dynamic acting is what sets this film apart, making any audience member convinced that they themselves are in the bloodied basement. Teddy, the driving force of the kidnapping and torture who consumes mass amounts of conspiracy-based media, raises the bar with forceful emotion, giving insight into his deranged mind.
The audience can see how Don is easily manipulated by Teddy, but his realistic dialogue and shifts in tone show his eventual resistance, as he comes to find faults in his cousin’s thinking. In direct contradiction from the two conspiracy theorists, Michelle, the all-powerful CEO turned “victim,” uses ridiculously precise facial expressions and devastating monologues, all in attempt to prove her humanity to her captors.
Whether it be watching Teddy lunge at Michelle animalistically over a cordial dinner or guttural screams echoing throughout Teddy’s childhood home, the audience is transcended into a world of inhumanity and manipulation from all angles. While the film centers primarily around three actors and takes place mostly in one room, boredom is impossible. Each scene provides a new horrific twist, filling the theater with gasps and yelps.
The musical score of “Bugonia,” created by Jerskin Fendrix, marking his third collaboration with Lanthimos, was made with only four words of inspiration and context: “bees,” “basement,” “spaceship,” and “bald.” Regardless, the tracks perfectly encapsulate the panic and violent temperament of the movie.
Most controversial is the close of the film, which drastically veers away from the anticipated, but is consistent with the unexplainable nature of the two-hour film. The final scene leaves the audience questioning the importance of humanity, and how complete control, whether from large corporations or something beyond comprehension, can devastate life as we know it.
9/10
