‘Bugonia’ Review: Yorgos Lanthimos and Co. Beams Up a Sharp American Satire For Our Alienated Nation
Like Paul Thomas Anderson, the current state of American life awakened angry Yorgos Lanthimos, and compelled him to forgo his usual fare of period pieces and bizarre Greek fables to engage with our modern American livelihoods. For the most capital-G Greek filmmaker out there, it's insane to admit that his Bugonia, a loose reimagining of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 Save the Green Planet, about a factory worker kidnapping a pharmaceutical CEO who he believes is an alien, is one of the most essential American movies of the year. The combined skillsets of screenwriter Will Tracy (The Menu, Succession) and Yorgos Lanthimos is a razor-sharp satire of humanity's decline driven by exceptional performances from Lanthi-alums Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Focus Features
MPA Rating: R (for bloody violent content including a suicide, grisly images and language.)
Runtime: 1 Hour and 58 Minutes
Language: English
Production Companies: Fremantle, Element Pictures, Square Peg, CJ ENM, Pith Quest Films, Fruit Tree
Distributor: Focus Pictures
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writers: Will Tracy
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone
U.S Release Date: October 24, 2025
In rural Georgia, amateur beekeeper, employee worker, and conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) convinces his kind-hearted-autistic cousin Dom (Aidan Delbis) that his boss, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of pharmaceutical company Auxolith, is from the alien race Andromeda. Convinced she's here as a pawn to eradicate humanity and that they are the only people who can stop her, they manage to kidnap Fuller at her home and hold her in the basement of his comatose mother's (Alicia Silverstone) house. Teddy accuses Michelle of causing Colony Collapse Disorder and killing the bees to protect her alien species. As their standoff unfolds, it becomes clear that Teddy’s paranoia hides something deeper: his unresolved rage toward Michelle’s possible role in his mother’s condition, the result of a long-ago pharmaceutical trial.
As Teddy and Michelle engage in a psychological interrogation duel blurring truth and delusion, Teddy’s disturbed psyche and dark past come to light, and he’s forced to confront not only Michelle but also the approach of Sheriff Casey (Stavros Halkias), his former babysitter and a haunting figure from his childhood trauma.
Bugonia in-Tracy-duces a new kind of Lanthimos
(L to R) Aidan Delbis as Don and Jesse Plemons as Teddy in director Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA, a Focus Features release. Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Bugonia is Lanthimos at his most accessible. With its small scope, scale and cast, it is like one of his Kinds of Kindness shorts but blown up to nearly two hours with a traditional three-act structure. It is almost a two-hander between Plemons and Stone… like Kinds of Kindness.
As opposed to the delightfully abrasive and peculiar Lanthimos/Tony McNamara pairing (The Favourite, Poor Things), or the two-Greeks-one-fucked-up-fable Lanthimos/Efthimis Filippou combo (Dogtooth, The Lobster, Kind of Kindness), this first Lanthimos/Tracy collaborative has achieved a best of both worlds, a middle ground. It feels like the filmmaker is adhering to American sensibilities, circa Killing of a Sacred Deer. Bugonia is tonally sound in its combination of Lanthimos's Greek atmosphere, which leans toward the viewer's discomfort, and Tracy's conversational, character-driven, dry, wry dialogue, reminiscent of the cerebral showdowns his works are known for.
In contrast to the comedy of Save the Green Planet, Bugonia is smartly grounded, serializing the traumatic elements its protagonist faces and unraveling his disturbed psyche as a result of never-ending abuse and trauma. Though Tracy penned this during the pandemic, it bears the same urgent relevancy as All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and even Luigi Mangione, penning a complex unraveling of the unchecked abuse of corporate power.
As great as Bugonia is, Tracy's script seems not entirely realized to the best of its abilities. I believe that it is lacking a little something in its transition from Teddy's personalized trauma to the examination of humanity as a whole, before its big third act swing. I do love it for critiquing how far we have strayed from humanity due to class disparities, brainrot, climate change… pretty much everything. It launches itself at hyperspeed but is just a little shy of earning it.
Self-serializing intellectual battle for power is what makes Bugonia truly excellent
Emma Stone stars as Michelle in director Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA, a Focus Features release. Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Sure, you can combat Bugonia by engaging with it from the "is she an alien or nah" angle or comparing its ending to its Korean counterpart. Granted, the film does keep you on your toes, as Stone's girlboss CEO vernacular is so "alien" in and of itself you begin questioning if she is one or is so detached from reality given her wealth and power, like many other rich folks affecting our fucking lives right n—sorry, I blacked out there. But the self-serializing intellectual battle for power is what makes Bugonia truly excellent. I was astounded.
Both characters exist in their own bubble of delusion and weakness. Teddy, who feels powerless after being subject to neglect, abandonment, and even molestation, seeks meaning by obsessively clinging to Andromedan conspiracy theories. Michelle, a queen bee type, is stripped of power and confined to the basement.
Set in 2025, Tracy’s script deftly threads in our contemporary condition of digital brainrot: the chronically online hubris that gives everyone absolute confidence in their assumptions. Teddy’s claim that he obtained Michelle’s “thermal imaging via Instagram”, for example, lands as both absurd and chilling, blurring the boundary between paranoia and proof. Within this mostly single-set interrogation, the two spar intellectually to peel back the layers and reveal their true identity. And it is sharp, empathetic, and compelling.
Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, and Aidan Delbis beams up fantastic performances.
(L to R) Emma Stone as Michelle, Aidan Delbis as Don and Jesse Plemons as Teddy in director Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA, a Focus Features release. Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
In his first — and criminally belated — leading role, Jesse Plemons, who has a history of portraying rather unwell men since Todd Alquist in Breaking Bad, delivers an impeccable humanizing portrayal of Teddy. He never renders the disturbed man as a stereotypical incel or a self-righteous villain. He's established like Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd from The Master — Plemons played his son in that, foreshadowing him becoming a kind of contemporary PSH — if he were a conspiracy theorist, and his only follower was his cousin. His assured confidence and matter-of-factness is unsettling yet surely familiar to those who know that one person who is chronically online. However, as the narrative progresses, Plemons masterfully shows the heart of a tortured child who never got to grow up in long-lasting scenes shared with Stone and Aidan Delbis.
The latter is astounding in a compassionate breakthrough role. Delbis' Don is the emotional heart of the film as Teddy’s only family. For this being his film debut, he occupies the same playing field as these Oscar-affiliated veterans and delivers sheer charm.
What needs to be said about 4-time Lanthi-alum Emma Stone that hasn't been said before? She so perfectly embodies the heartless persona of an Elizabeth Holmes-like CEO. Stone is a chameleon who embeds herself in whatever assignment her director has and operates at the highest level, as per freaking usual.
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