Yorgos Lanthimos is back, and he’s never been stranger. Bugonia (2025) is a mind-bending, visually hypnotic blend of dark comedy, paranoia, and existential dread. The film marks Lanthimos’s return to familiar territory — a world where absurdity and human cruelty intertwine — but this time, his lens captures the unraveling of reality itself.
With mesmerizing performances from Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, Bugonia cements itself as one of the year’s most unforgettable — and most divisive — cinematic experiences.
🎬 The Premise — A World on the Edge
Inspired by the 2003 Korean cult film Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia reinterprets its story through a Western lens. The film follows Teddy, a reclusive beekeeper (Plemons), who becomes obsessed with the belief that a powerful biotech CEO, Michelle Fuller (Stone), is secretly an alien orchestrating humanity’s downfall.
Convinced the fate of Earth hangs in the balance, Teddy kidnaps Michelle in a derelict basement lab, determined to extract the “truth.” What follows is a spiraling psychological confrontation — one that tests morality, identity, and the very concept of sanity.
But in true Lanthimos fashion, every answer only opens more unsettling questions.
🧠 Themes — Madness, Control, and Survival
🐝 Conspiracy and Collapse
The title Bugonia — an ancient myth about bees reborn from dead cattle — serves as a haunting metaphor for rebirth through decay. Here, bees become symbols of ecological death and human desperation. Teddy’s crusade, driven by grief and rage, mirrors the real-world obsession with conspiracies and misplaced savior complexes.
⚙️ Corporate Power & Human Disconnect
Michelle represents the cold precision of modern capitalism — a personification of innovation divorced from empathy. The more she denies Teddy’s claims, the more we question her humanity. Lanthimos transforms this power struggle into an allegory for how belief and truth mutate in the digital age.
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🌀 Alienation & The Fragile Mind
Like The Killing of a Sacred Deer or The Lobster, Bugonia blurs satire and horror. It exposes our hunger for meaning in chaos — and how quickly logic collapses when fear takes hold.
🌟 The Performances
Emma Stone (Michelle Fuller):
Stone’s performance is a masterclass in restraint. Her quiet defiance and hollow calm make Michelle both victim and enigma. Beneath her stillness, there’s an otherworldly energy — as if she might actually be what Teddy believes she is.
Jesse Plemons (Teddy):
Plemons delivers one of his career’s best roles. He’s terrifying and tragic — a man lost in his own certainty. His portrayal of paranoia feels disturbingly real, and his chemistry with Stone anchors the film’s emotional chaos.
Supporting Cast:
Alicia Silverstone adds melancholy weight as Teddy’s grieving mother, while Aidan Delbis and Stavros Halkias provide flashes of uneasy humor, breaking the tension just enough to remind us we’re still watching a Lanthimos film.
🎥 Direction & Style
Lanthimos crafts Bugonia like a fever dream.
His trademark symmetry and sterile color palettes return, but this time they serve a new kind of claustrophobia. The buzzing of bees becomes a constant background hum — a metaphor for the anxiety that infects every scene.
Cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s lens is both beautiful and unsettling: close-ups linger too long, hallways seem to stretch infinitely, and sterile labs glow like alien spacecraft. The film’s tension builds not through jump scares but through discomfort — a lingering dread that never releases.
⚖️ Strengths & Weaknesses
✅ What Works
- Unflinching performances from Stone and Plemons.
- Atmospheric storytelling that fuses surrealism with real-world horror.
- Bold direction that forces the audience to confront uncomfortable truths about fanaticism and guilt.
❌ What Doesn’t
- Pacing issues: The middle act occasionally stalls, repeating scenes of interrogation that test patience.
- Emotional distance: Lanthimos’s signature detachment keeps some viewers at arm’s length.
- Ambiguous ending: The finale’s surreal twist will leave audiences divided — a hallmark of his style, but not universally satisfying.
🧩 Final Verdict
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 / 5)
Bugonia is challenging, unsettling, and unrelentingly strange — everything you’d expect from Yorgos Lanthimos at his boldest. It’s not a film for everyone, but for those willing to descend into its madness, it offers a haunting mirror to our fractured world.
At its core, Bugonia asks a simple question: what if the real alien force destroying Earth isn’t from the sky — but within us?
