Bugonia Film Review (Venice Film Festival 2025): Brilliant Film About Conspiracy Theory?
If you don’t like violence, leave this film alone, even if getting lost in “Bugonia” by Yorgos Lanthimos just for a few strong scenes would be a real shame. Intelligent, very powerful, unconventional as only Lanthimos can be, “Bugonia”, in official competition at Venezia 82 and a remake of the South Korean film “Save the Green Planet!!”, it is a work that enters inside, insinuates itself under the skin, and has a great future. Emma Stone returns to collaborate with his “soulmate” Yorgos Lanthimos after “Poor Things!”, winner of Venice80, and “Kinds of Kindness“, and demonstrates, once again, his full potential as an interpreter. She is not afraid of getting Emma’s hands dirty, of shaving her hair to get into the role, of getting emotionally naked and exposing herself without hesitation, giving herself completely to the character she plays, but above all, to the audience.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ path is particular, from a cult cinephile author with his first works to a popular director since The Favorite forward. We met him on his debut in 2001, we followed him intrigued with Dogtooth and The Lobster, we saw the popular explosion that occurred two years ago in Venice with Poor Things!. And now here we are again talking about him, back at the Lido after the parenthesis on the Croisette Kinds of Kindness, with Bugonia, once again together with his icon of the moment, Emma Stone, who, thanks to him, also won an Oscar two years ago. It is legitimate to ask the announcement what we should expect from the Greek author: something more similar to the grotesque cold of the beginning, or an evolution of what was set by The Lobster and above all The Favorite forward, which culminated in the 2023 Golden Lion? The truth is perhaps in the middle and continues what he tried to introduce last year with the film presented at Cannes, arriving at a more cohesive and complete result.
Bugonia Film Review (Venice Film Festival 2025): The Story Plot
The story of Bugonia is simple, direct, and immediate. How articulated and full of ideas its development is: the protagonist is Teddy, a beekeeper with the increasingly widespread “vice” of not trusting those in power, believing that they lie to maintain control. Un conspiracy theorist, to put it clearly and unequivocally, who accompanies himself with a friend who shares the same bizarre ideas, together with whom he decides to kidnap the CEO of an important company. The motivation? They are convinced that she is an alien and that she carries out the secret goal of conquering, or destroying, our planet. We do not add further details so as not to anticipate anything else about the film and its development, except that the criticism of the socio-cultural situation is not limited to this idea, but meanders thin and intriguing throughout the film, in dialogues and situations that reflect, and they make us reflect on the current human condition.
The starting point of Bugonia is a South Korean production of 2003 by Joon-Hwan Jang, entitled Save the Green Planet! In this sci-fi comedy rather bizarre, a young man kidnaps the president of a big company, believing it’s an alien in disguise, with plans for an invasion of Planet Earth by the species. The premises of Lanthimos’ film remain about same: an isolated beekeeper from a non-US citizen better identified (Jesse Plemons ), along with the help of the cousin he lives with, he decides to kidnap the CEO of a successful multinational, with the deep-rooted belief that not only do the evils of everything depend on her the world but also the tragic destruction of his family. Conspiracy thriller tints, already partially explored in the second segment of Kinds of Kindness, become in Bugonia an emotional investigation point: behind every plot glimpsed, every manipulation carried out, it actually hides enormous suffering, at least since part of who we would initially only despise. Jesse Plemons, Palme d’Or for best leading actor in Lanthimos’ latest film, confirms himself as a talent that is perhaps still too hidden, which manages to give complexity and nuances to a figure that seemed impossible to separate from his apparent status as a villain.
Bugonia Film Review and Analysis (Venice Film Festival 2025)
Telling the story of two men obsessed with conspiracies who kidnap a woman at the head of a company believing she is an alien intent on destroying humanity, “Buognia” becomes a wonderful, but at the same time chilling, satire on contemporary society, on the dangers of conspiracy delusions, on the obsessions of human beings, their limits and on how much their own hand is destroying the world, day after day. With dialogues that are nothing short of brilliant, a very particular plot that glues to the screen – and here we understand that at the basis of the story there is a Sudorean idea – and extraordinary actors like Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bed) alongside Stone, this new film by Yorgos Lanthimos is destined for great things but, above all, to leave a mark on the conscience of those who will watch it. It belongs to the dystopian/science fiction genre, but this film, if you look at it closely, is much more real than any openly realistic film and, precisely for this reason, it is stronger and gives even more shivers (especially in its ending, which literally leaves you speechless).
Looking at “Bugonia” means undertaking a very profound intellectual journey; it means looking in the mirror, examining your conscience, and leaving the room more aware of yourself and the reality by which you are surrounded. Let yourself be amazed by the genius of Lanthimos, there are few courageous and “crazy” directors like him, unfortunately. From sci-fi to social criticism, from a hopeless humanity to an unbridled passion for a science fiction ideal that proves to be the best of all possible worlds. In Bugonia, the last word is never said. Like the figure of Plemons, Michelle Fuller, or Emma Stone, he may be an unsuspecting and helpless victim, a scapegoat for senseless certainty. Now matured in a fragile psyche and marked by unimaginable tragedy. But it could also be the most diabolical and indifferent soul, the sublime and elegant shell of an infernal spirit. Everything is doubled in Bugonia, and all that can amuse in comedy can also be the bitter truth in drama. A sharp and sarcastic metaphor that in science fiction sees the most distant plan of a future of which one is unaware. And the only plausible hypothesis is that of a planet increasingly at risk, capable of self-destruction.
Beneath the absurdity of the plot, Bugonia reveals a most lucid soul. Lanthimos tells how humans need to build fictitious worlds to survive the chaos of reality. Teddy becomes the symbol of a society that prefers to spot an external enemy –even if she were an alien masquerading as an entrepreneur – rather than take responsibility for her own failures. It’s a scathing but deep human criticism, not just ridiculing conspiracy theories, but it investigates the emotional need, that desperate attempt to make sense of an unmanageable world. The emotional heart of the film is the confrontation between Michelle and Teddy. Emma Stone offers a glacial and magnetic interpretation: Michelle Fuller is an enigmatic character, suspended between detachment and fragility, capable of remaining elusive until the end. Jesse Plemons, on the other hand, transforms Teddy into a tragic, fragile, and desperate antihero, a man who seeks answers and finds only other abysses. Aidan Delbis as Cousin Don adds nuances of surreal comedy without ever slipping into caricature, while the appearances of Alicia Silverstone and Stavros Halkias enrich the context with short but incisive appearances.
When compared with Eddington, with whom he shares the theme of conspiracy theory and even Ari Aster’s productive hand, Bugonia appears more focused and incisive, capable of carrying forward his reflection without dispersing into too many deviations. Yet, Lanthimos does not give up his most recognizable vice: the continuous change of register. The film moves from pure drama to grotesque comedy, from psychological thriller to ferocious satire, without ever finding a stable balance. This instability, however, is not a pure flaw: it is an integral part of Bugonia‘s charm, which lives precisely on its unpredictability. Bugonia is not a perfect film –the constant changes of tone and the mixing of registers risk, at times, dispersing attention – but it is a powerful, living, and necessary work. It is cinema that dares, that entertains, and restless, that confronts the spectator with his own need to invent monsters to give meaning to chaos. With all its excesses and defects, Bugonia confirms Yorgos Lanthimos as one of the most daring and interesting authors on the contemporary scene, capable of transforming the grotesque into a ruthless lens on our reality.
If, as mentioned, Jesse Plemons works and finds a good sidekick in Aidan Delbis, the film finds its fulfillment in Emma Stone’s rehearsal. Her trust in Lanthimos and in the project, of which she is also the producer, is evident right from the start and materializes in giving herself in every way to Bugonia, how much and how he had already done with Poor Things!: his is also a physical test, in which he suffers everything, from a haircut to the excesses of violence of his jailer Teddy. If there are doubts about the alien nature of Michelle, we can resolve doubts about that of her interpreter, Emma Stone, who confirms herself among the most versatile and complete actresses of this generation. Alien, especially when she is in the service of an author from lucid madness as Yorgos Lanthimos. Bugonia is a bittersweet film, where top-down and total shots abound in the first half, aimed at showing the unquantifiable breadth of state-of-the-art buildings and spaces. Aseptic and modern, well-kept and cold.
Here, photography is the representation of a dark, apathetic, and detached future, but at the same time, also refined, chic, and sophisticated. Sophisticated just as it is, Bugonia, which in phantasmagorical dystopias manages to surprise, to insist on sequences that change meaning in their succession, scene after scene. The direction thus focuses, in the second part, on the faces of an extraordinary cast, giving little material to a screenplay which is entrusted with hints, never didactic, of a tormented past and perhaps some clarification on what a silent and desperate conclusion will be. Even if the plot of Bugonia is not that original, Lanthimos continues to be a director who always knows how to win over his audience. Emma Stone was anyone to Lanthimos, and it’s no surprise that she came to embody the hypothesis of an alien life, an enigmatic possibility of an all-encompassing source of control. Se Bella Baxter had yet to discover everything, Michelle already knew everything. We have no difficulty in believing it, because in the hands of the Greek director Stone, it simply becomes exceptional.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ film seems to take steps backwards, returning to the science fiction it had characterized in The Lobster, but which oscillates between delirium and paranoia. From the beginning, a disturbing air is perceived, filled with ordinary madness by the protagonist Teddy as he trains his cousin Don for the mission that awaits him: to kidnap Michele Fuller, CEO of a pharmaceutical company, considered by the weird duo to be an extraterrestrial from Andromeda who intends to destroy humanity. From here, you can’t help but enter a sick world that is closer than you think today. Who has never opened today’s socials and read the myriad comments about chemtrails and whatnot? Through this story, Lanthimos does not return to the quality that characterized his latest films, but builds around himself a black comedy that prevaricates the thin line between truth and falsification. He still plays with manipulation like he did in Kind of Kindness, manages to be disturbing with the performances of the desperate Teddy and the disturbing Michelle, the two poles of the Greek filmmaker’s film.
This creates a clash between the loser and the winner, between the poor wretch and the rich CEO, between those who have received the evil and those who commit it. A little like Parasite, a class struggle is created that is an end in itself, implemented to parody conspiracy theories. Too bad that, beyond this interesting content, the feature film goes no further. In fact, however much Lanthimos has created a work with a misanthropic flavour, the potential has not been fully exploited: the excessive duration is lost in long dialogues that would have deserved a greater reduction, just as the ending, however hilarious and at the same time desolate, is obvious and banal. Lanthimos doesn’t blow a hole: Bugonia turns out to be an ambition that could have made more. Unfortunately, the issues at stake are interesting if we consider the current times and how self-destructing humanity is. It doesn’t matter whether aliens exist or not; they could be the ones to put an end to our story, or we will be the ones to do it.
Bugonia Film Review (Venice Film Festival 2025): The Last Words
With Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos returns to Venice together with Emma Stone to tell a grotesque thriller that mixes social satire, black comedy, and psychological drama. Through the story of Teddy, a beekeeper obsessed with plots, and powerful CEO Michelle Fuller, the film explores the human need to invent monsters to survive the chaos. With a cast in a state of grace and a cold and disturbing aesthetic, Bugonia impresses with lucidity and originality, while suffering from an unstable balance between the different narrative registers. Yorgos Lanthimos strikes again! Bugonia continues the discussion he has already undertaken with Kinds of Kindness, but in an even more complete and solid way. Despite being a remake, Lanthimos makes the film his own and builds it with his lucid madness by working on irony, excesses, and above all, on his characters. A credit that must therefore be shared with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, who embody the spirit of the film and contribute to its success.
Bugonia Film Review: The Last Words
Bugonia is a film that confirms Yorgos Lanthimos’ disturbing and grotesque vision, but does not amplify its power. Between presumed aliens, real conspiracy theories, and a self-destructing society, the Greek director builds a black comedy that plays with contemporary paranoia, but which fails to go beyond its satirical structure. The film entertains, restless and does not leave its mark like his previous works. An ambitious, but not entirely successful, work that stops halfway between delirium and denunciation. With Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos returns to Venice together with Emma Stone to tell a grotesque thriller that mixes social satire, black comedy, and psychological drama. Through the story of Teddy, a beekeeper obsessed with plots, and powerful CEO Michelle Fuller, the film explores the human need to invent monsters to survive the chaos. With a cast in a state of grace and a cold and disturbing aesthetic, Bugonia impresses with lucidity and originality, while suffering from an unstable balance between the different narrative registers.
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Where We Watched: At the Venice Film Festival 2025
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
