Movie Review: Bugonia (2025)

“ The workers gather pollen for the Queen…but the bees, they’re dying…and that’s the way they planned it…to make us the same as the bees”

Bugonia (2025)

DIRECTOR: Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster (2015), Poor Things (2023), Kinds of Kindness (2024)

WRITER: Will Tracy

MAIN CAST (CHARACTERS): Emma Stone (Michelle Fuller), Jesse Plemons (Teddy Gatz), Aidan Delbis (Don), Stavros Halkias (Casey), Alicia Silverstone (Sandy)

Weirdness and Eccentricity in Modern Hollywood

Weirdness and eccentricity seem to be the “new normal” now in Hollywood, and HEY, let’s suck it up! Horror fans, we are already living in a golden age – let’s look at the evidence and consider the downright spooky Weapons (unsettlingly witchcraft, gory, eerie child abductions), Bring Her Back (about grief, abuse, Satanism, etc.), and it hasn’t been long since we “enjoyed” the wackiness and originality of The Substance (body horror, a meditation on our obsession with beauty and aging), although that was, in my opinion, ruined by the gross-out ending.

Into this gory breach steps Yorgos Lanthimos – Greek director of Poor Things (2023) and Kinds of Kindness (2024) – and if you are not familiar with his style and themes, your head will be spinning because Bugonia is a pitch-black wild ride of a movie.

The story – spoiler free.  

So, what is it about? Frequent Lanthimos collaborators Emma Stone (Michelle Fuller) and Jesse Plemons (Teddy Gatz) give committed and intense performances. On the surface, Bugonia is a dark comedy/thriller about Teddy, a conspiracy-obsessed beekeeper, and his cousin Don. Teddy is convinced that Michelle Fuller (Stone), a powerful pharmaceutical CEO, is secretly an alien planning to destroy Earth. With the help of his cousin Don, he kidnaps her, and the bulk of the film plays out in the basement where he interrogates her, tests her, and demands she confess her alien identity.

Teddy believes that there is a limited window — linked to a lunar eclipse — to negotiate with her alien “people.” Coupled with this, there are flashbacks that explore Teddy’s past (including his relationship with his mother, Sandy) and what drove him to his paranoia. So far, so gloomy. The film raises questions about power, delusion, corporate greed, and belief — it’s as much a satire of modern society as it is a thriller/horror.

Big themes.

It is a paranoid, slow-burning car crash of a movie, with some big themes being thrown around. At its core, Bugonia is about the attraction of conspiracy theories — how people can become utterly convinced of a narrative that explains their fears, frustrations, or traumas. The film plays with the tension between what we believe, what we want to believe, and what we can’t bring ourselves to confront.

It is also about power and authority – the dynamic between Teddy and Michelle is a study in power imbalance. Like much of Lanthimos’s work, Bugonia is fascinated by absolute certainty in an absurd world. Characters cling to rigid beliefs despite contradictory evidence — a hallmark of Lanthimos’s dark humour. It is also a satire of modern fear culture, dealing with online conspiracy communities, anti-corporate outrage, apocalyptic thinking, and the rise of “alternative truths.” It is about what we consider monstrous or “alien” and how easily we dehumanise people who scare us or challenge our worldview.

Great performances.

All of this would be quite heavy, ponderous, and depressing if it wasn’t for the joy and skill of the central performances. Emma Stone has undoubted ability to balance ambiguity, control, and vulnerability, and Jesse Plemons gives a quietly explosive performance — possibly one of his best. The film blends and bends genres (dark comedy, psychological thriller, social satire), and the message of Lanthimos seems to be that it is ridiculous to have absolute certainty in an absurd world. Characters cling to rigid beliefs despite contradictory evidence — a hallmark of Lanthimos’s dark humour.

Critical Reception

Critics have, rightly, raved about it and made some interesting and insightful points: Robert Daniels (RogerEbert.com) says: “Lanthimos spends much of Bugonia … questioning who the monsters and tyrants are and what is the tangibly human and emotionally alien … the film is an enraged picture … mad at humanity.”

Meagan Navarro (Cinema Blend) remarks: “The sardonic, genre‑bending satire takes aim at modern echo chambers and their erosion of humanity. … a cynical condemnation of our self‑destructive nature.”

Nick Schager (Daily Beast) points out: “Stone is a mesmerizing riot in this bleak satire … as is her co-star Jesse Plemons, who matches her intensity and manages to outdo her craziness.”

Owen Gleiberman (Soap Central) says: The script is an “ingeniously witty and incisive exposé of the duelling mindsets it’s about.”

Lanthimos’s Signature Style

Lanthimos is a unique and lauded filmmaker – as Wikipedia succinctly puts it:“His films often feature uniquely framed cinematography, deadpan acting, and characters with stilted speech… they mix absurdist dark comedy with violent and sexually explicit content… and often explore the nature of power and its impact on the people who are vying for, using, or being exploited or influenced by it.”

Bugonia grabs you by the short and curlies … and does not let go until the (crazy) ending. If you leave your preconceptions of what a movie should be like and what it should say or mean, you are going to love it. It is weird and heartfelt, logical and illogical, with shades of light and dark – hell, you may have guessed the ending well before then, but what a wonderfully mind-bending trip you will have been on.

Score: 9/10