BUGONIA (2025) C+
BUGONIA
(director: Yorgos Lanthimos; screenwriter: Will Tracy; cinematographer: Robbie Ryan; editor: Yorgos Lanthimos; music: Jerskin Fendrix; cast: Emma Stone (Michelle Fuller), Jesse Plemons (Teddy), Aidan Delbis (Don), Stavros Halkias (Casey, local cop), Alicia Silverstone (Sandy); Runtime: 120; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Ed Guiney, Andrew Lower, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen, Miky Lee, Jerry Kyoungboum Ko; Focus Features; 2025-in Ireland, UK, USA,Canada,South Korea-in English)
“Made me feel as if I had my head shaved.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Unconventional Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Killing of a Sacred Deer”/”Poor Things”) directs and Will Tracy, a writer of TV shows does the screenplay for this absurdist, dark comedy/drama about a political kidnapping over eco issues. It’s a nonsensical remake of the paranoid 2003 South Korean film, Save The Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan. Emma Stone stars in her fourth straight film she made with Yorgos.
The title refers to a myth about bees emerging from a dead ox.
Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is an angry young amateur beekeeper who works a low-level job in the packaging department for Auxolith, a large biomedical firm, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The company is run by the glacial high-powered CEO, the hated Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), who values company profits over perfecting its medical products.
Teddy kidnaps the young executive in her luxurious home because he falsely believes after following on the Internet various conspiracy theories that Michelle’s an alien posing as a corporate head, whose intention is to invade the Earth and destroy it. He also blames her greedy drug company without cause for his mother’s (Alicia Silverstone) illness and coma.
Teddy is an irrational extremist environmentalist whose facts come from all the misinformation he absorbs on-line (does not read the ‘news’). He believes the falsehood that the essential source of the food supply for our planet, the bees, are dying off over bad government policies influenced by Big Pharma.
To fight his chosen enemies, Teddy partners with his moronic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) to abduct Michelle. He keeps her locked-up in the basement of his rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of town, where he shaves her head so she can’t communicate with her fellow aliens. The two crazies try to get Michelle to take Teddy to her mothership so he can save the world.
While Teddy is all worked-up during the kidnapping, Michelle is calm as she tries to convince him to free her.
The overlong pic plods on without being that funny or enlightening, instead being mostly creepy. It seemed clear that the kidnapper was mentally ill (which should explain everything).
The heavy-handed pic is an example of the strange humor and macabre narratives that Lanthimos employs for his black comedy satires. His off-beat films are an acquired tastes I have not yet acquired. The pretentious storytelling here made me feel as if I had my head shaved.
It played at the Venice Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 9/10/2025 GRADE: C+
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