'Bugonia' Is a Conspiracy-Minded Thriller for Our Times

The less you know about Bugonia going into it, the better. The fourth collaboration between Greek tragedian Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone is also one of the pair’s best, competing against only the director’s wickedly barbed 2017 dark comedy The Favourite for the top spot. But the films are so completely different, stylistically and if not ideologically, that they can happily coexist side by side.

In Bugonia, Stone stars as Michelle Fuller, the Jeff Bezos-esque entrepreneur behind biomedical company Auxolith. Not much is known about the company except that it’s a rabid exploiter of its workforce. On the day we meet her, one of Michelle’s primary objectives is to inform the workforce that, following an overwork-related catastrophe, they may now leave at 5:30 p.m. “Feel free to head home for the day if you don’t have any more work,” she tells her valet. “Unless you have more to do. Totally up to you.”

Michelle is subsequently kidnapped by a couple of greasy conspiracy theorists—Teddy (Jesse Plemos) and his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis)—who are convinced she’s a space alien whose race is secretly controlling humanity. They shave Michelle’s head so that she can’t use her hair to communicate with her alien brethren, and slather her in antihistamine cream to limit her allegedly mystical abilities. Their end goal is not immediately clear; it doesn’t seem they’re holding Michelle for ransom, nor do they want to assassinate her. At first, Michelle resists the command to admit she’s a space alien. But then, perhaps sensing it’s her only hope, she tries to satisfy the pair by copping to her extraterrestrial roots. But it remains unclear who, in fact, is on the right side of the truth.

Bugonia is a riveting piece of filmmaking which ranks amongst Lanthimos’ most satisfying and inspired films. It’s ostensibly a remake of the 2003 South Korean drama Save the Green Planet, but Bugonia improves so drastically on the already pretty good original that it proudly stands on its own. In a year when some of the most prominent auteurs, like Darren Aronofsky (Caught Stealing) and Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), produced their most populist works to date, so now does Lanthimos.

While Bugonia is far from a crowd-pleaser, it is the filmmaker’s most genre-inflected movie to date, and the one which most rigorously adheres to the rules of popcorn filmmaking. It is not, however, for everyone, and Lanthimos’ penchant for jet-black humor and occasional lashings of extreme gore remains strictly a required taste. But few make comedies of hopelessness more fun than Lanthimos does, and Bugonia serves as a satisfying entry point for those curious about the filmmaker but still unfamiliar with his work. 

Stone is extraordinary in the central role, as is Plemons, but the ace up Bugonia’s sleeve is its incessantly rewarding structure. Most impressive is how the film not only makes us sympathize with the conspiracy theorists but puts the audience in the shoes of its protagonists and asks us to see things from their point of view. It’s a risky gambit which, come the third act, pays off in spades.

Lanthimos is clearly having a grand old time sending up his cinematic obsessions, using with Lanthimos using his star’s bald visage to reference everything from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent epic The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) to Alexandre Aja’s French extremity slasher High Tension (2004), the latter in a prolonged sequence which finds the actor covered head-to-toe in viscera and fighting to her life. Bugonia also boasts some of Lanthimos' most stunning set design, and this from the man who brought us a steampunk version of the past in Poor Things. Teddy and Don's house, a cluttered mania intended to resemble their overworked brains, is as ratty and dank as Michelle's corporate office is bleached and antiseptic. The architecture of the interior spaces tells us more about these characters' mindsets than any dialogue could.

Bugonia is one of this year’s most audacious and exciting movies, but it’s also one which makes some chillingly cogent points about the state of the world today. “You’re living in an echo chamber,” Michelle tells Teddy, referring to his potentially internet-influenced beliefs. But is he? More importantly, are we? Outside of its stunning climactic montage, Bugonia certainly doesn’t offer any solutions for what ails mankind today. But it will ignite a searing conversation, and one imagines the picture will only gain potency in the months and years to come. It’s a stunning, mind-boggling knockout.

Bugonia is in cinemas nationwide from October 31.