Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, and Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan. All of which are legendary duos that when they’re paired up on screen create astonishing work in turn on the silver screen. Since 2018’s The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s imaginative collaborations are much deserved of being talked about among these titans. Lanthimos’ latest film, Bugonia, is one to revel in its usual sense of surrealism and its marvelous deconstruction of how the elite truly own every ounce of the working class and the danger of conspiracy tinfoil followers. 

Bugonia follows two conspiracy-obsessed cousins, played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis, who kidnap the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, played by Emma Stone, convinced that she is an alien sent to planet Earth to destroy it. This is a remake of the 2003 South Korean film titled Save the Green Planet! which follows a similar plot. 

The film does not hold back at all on understanding the uncanny precedence it has to follow. There’s an immense amount of absurdity behind two men thinking that aliens are real and let alone having infiltrated an integral part of human society to destroy it. They even shave off her hair on the basis of avoiding her contacting her mothership. 

Writer Will Tracy, who previously wrote The Menu and a couple of episodes from Succession, perfectly balances this humor and satirization of chronically online men who will dive deep into conspiracy theories in a dangerous manner. Both projects were deep commentaries on how the elite upper class are snobs to the people below them. Just like The Menu, Bugonia goes deep in showing the perspective of the working class and how they’re fed up. 

Teddy, played by Plemons, is a beekeeper as a hobby and works as a warehouse worker for the very same pharmaceutical company that Michelle, played by Stone, owns. From working within the company and spending too much time online, Teddy builds up the theory that the company’s pesticides are killing his bees and are additionally responsible for the misfortunes of his life. It’s not far-fetched either that Teddy tending to his bees is a reference to himself. He’s not only working to save his own queen bee, his dying mother, but he finds himself to be the savior for all humanity, not just for the bees. Teddy is hellbent on revenge, he blames the people in suits are responsible for poisoning his mother, sending her into a coma, and that his cousin and him are in terrible shape. Even with how cruel he treats Michelle, he holds pure love for his family, despite how much awful advice he’s learned online that he inflicts on them. 

Michelle is, of course, out of touch with properly treating her workers on a human scale and does not really uphold any interest in pushing for diversity in her company. Even when she is kidnapped, she attempts to gain control of the situation by threatening that she is a major part of the world and that kidnapping her is worse than kidnapping a government official. 

Emma Stone is brilliant in how she’s fully immersed in the role of a desperate CEO attempting to gain any power over others. She’s stuck between trying to convince her kidnappers that she’s a regular human like anyone else, or whether she commits to the bit of being an alien that communicates through a calculator. Each time Stone has done a film with Lanthimos, it’s hard to pick not only what are her best performances through these films, but also in her overall career. 

Similarly, Jesse Plemons comes from his second time collaborating with Lanthimos after Kinds of Kindness, where again Plemons is fully on Lanthimos’ same spectrum of being fully committed to these dark satirical roles. Plemons is another actor who needs to be a part of each Lanthimos film from now on. 

Despite the middle of the film feeling a bit too stretched out from the repeated nature of being trapped in the basement, the payoff is immense when the trouble blows out of insane proportion. 

4.5 out of 5 stars 

Bugonia is easily one of Lanthimos’ best and his direction in handling the satire of how the rich control over all and the dangers of echo chambers. It’s one to see in its current relevancy and its nihilistic view of the world’s inevitable end.