Yorgos Lanthimos He doesn't make easy films. We know that. But Bugonia It's different. It's linear, claustrophobic, constructed like a thriller that doesn't give you the satisfaction of truth. Emma Stone is Michelle Fuller, CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Jesse Plemons It's Teddy, a paranoid beekeeper who kidnaps her, convinced she's an alien. The film takes place almost entirely in a basement.
Three days. A lunar eclipse. And a question that never stops changing shape: which of the two is lying?
When the truth depends on the angle
Lanthimos does something simple but devastating. Every time Teddy questions Michelle, he shoots him from below. She shoots him from above. He seems threatening. She seems persecuted. It's The Passion of Joan of Arc (Falconetti, 1928) translated into a contemporary key. Why use the visual language of martyrdom on a CEO crushing her employees? Because in Bugonia, no one is truly innocent. Our ability to distinguish reality from fiction is poor., much more than we think. And when perception becomes the only compass, anything can be true. Oh false.
The film is a remake of Save the Green Planet!, 2003 South Korean cult. But where the original played on grotesque aesthetics and excess, Lanthimos takes awayStrip away all the trappings. The skeleton remains: a room, two people, a conspiracy theory that may or may not be true.
The Greek director has made a career out of dismantling certainties. Here he goes further. He forces you to choose, but doesn't give you the tools to do so. You have to figure it out on your own, possibly without AI and Google (the two, in fact, converge).
Fun Fact: 4 Words for a Soundtrack
The craziest thing? Jerskin Fendrix, the composer (the one of Poor Creatures(Oscar-nominated!), he wrote the entire score with a ninety-piece orchestra using just four words. Bees. Basement. Spaceship. Emma-bald. No script, no images, no context. Lanthimos gave him four coordinates and said: go. The result is a score that oscillates between bombast and chamber music, as if Star Wars met Kubrick in a musty basement.
Fendrix has stated that he would never have composed that score if he'd read the script. It's a method that turns everything on its head. Instead of illustrating the film's emotions, the music anticipates them, contradicts them, and amplifies them in a haphazard way.
It's like a colleague commenting on a meeting without reading the agenda: sometimes he gets it right, other times he misses the mark. But it works.
This choice isn't just a stylistic quirk. It's the heart of the film. Bugonia is built on ambiguity, and having a soundtrack that doesn't "know" what it's accompanying amplifies the disorientation. There's no comfort. There's no emotional guidance. You're alone, in the room with the protagonists.
Conspiracy theories and artificial intelligence
Teddy is a conspiracy theorist. He listens to podcasts, collects evidence, and connects dots that don't exist. Like the witnesses who every few months knock on the door of the American Congress to talk about UAPHe, too, has constructed a coherent narrative from scattered clues. Michelle, on the other hand, has been experimenting on her mother. The bees are dying. Even I, as I write this review, feel a pang in my stomach.
The film comes out at a historical moment where Artificial intelligence can debunk conspiracy theories with personalized conversations. But Bugonia suggests something more disturbing: perhaps it's not evidence that conspiracy theorists lack. Perhaps it's that each of us constructs our own reality by selecting facts that confirm what we want to believe.
Michelle is a ruthless CEO who has ruined lives for profit. Teddy is a grief-stricken man searching for a cosmic culprit. Both are right. Both are wrong.
Will Tracy, screenwriter of Succession e The Menu, Bugonia wrote, like a debate with no winners. Every scene is a match where no one knocks out the other. Michelle dismantles Teddy's theories with cold logic. Teddy responds with evidence that seems delusional but has its own internal coherence. It's an exhausting ping-pong game. And the further you go, the more you realize that you're only rooting for those who are most like you.
Bugonia: The Lanthimos Method Applied to Paranoia
Lanthimos has always worked on the absurd. In T singles were transformed into animals. In Poor creatures! A woman was reborn with the brain of a newborn baby. Here, the absurdity is subterranean. There are no special effects. There is no visible science fiction. There is only the doubt that undermines everything. A bit like those people who are convinced that ChatGPT has a conscience After talking to us for weeks, Teddy has constructed an alternate reality so detailed that it is impossible to dismantle it from the outside.
The director shot almost the entire film in VistaVision 35mm, a format that hasn't been used since 1961. Film captures details that digital loses.
Every pore of Plemons. Every crease of Stone's suit. The claustrophobic texture of the basement. It's not nostalgia. It's precision. When the truth is ambiguous, details become obsession.
Robbie Ryan, director of photography (his fourth collaboration with Lanthimos), stated that Bugonia is the film that used more VistaVision than any other in the last sixty years. Why? Because the format forces you to slow down. Every shot costs money. Every frame is thoughtful. In an age where digital allows you to shoot hours of footage for almost nothing, returning to film is a declaration of intent: here, every second counts. You'll see, this thing will become a trend.
Emma Stone and the risk of second viewing
Emma Stone said that for the first time, she thought about her performance with a second viewing in mind. Because when you know how it ends, every blink of an eye changes meaning. Every hesitation. Every glance. Lanthimos frames them from above, but she doesn't play the victim. She has the composure of someone in control. Or perhaps the coldness of someone who isn't human. It depends on when you pause.
Jesse Plemons is perfect. Sweaty, dirty, confident. He has the look of someone who's studied too much and slept too little. He's like those Reddit users who... they fall into spiritual abysses after talking to a chatbot for weeks. The difference is that Teddy has a plan. He trained his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis(in his first film appearance). He's prepared psychological torture. He has a deadline: the lunar eclipse. Three days to get an alien to confess. Or to confirm a delusion.
Because Bugonia doesn't solve anything, or maybe it does
Bugonia ends, but it doesn't close. Lanthimos gives you answers, but they're the wrong ones. Or the right ones interpreted badly. Or maybe they're right but not the way you thought. The film has an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 68 on Metacritic. It's not a unanimous masterpiece like Poor Creatures!It's too dark, too uncomfortable. But it's the kind of movie that stays. Because it doesn't let you go.
ari aster (director of Hereditary e Midsummer) is a producer. And it shows. His obsession with family trauma disguised as something else. Teddy isn't looking for aliens. He's looking for someone to blame for his mother's death. Michelle isn't defending her company. She's defending the idea that everything she's done is justifiable. Both cling to their narratives because the alternative is too painful.
The title, Bugonia, is a Greek word that describes an ancient rite: It was believed that bees were born spontaneously from the carcasses of dead animalsLife from death. Transformation. Or maybe just an illusion. A way to make sense of chaos by observing patterns that don't exist. Like Teddy, who sees aliens where there are only ruthless CEOs. Like Michelle, who sees irrationality where there's pain. Like me, watching the film and convinced I understand it. And like you too.
Bugonia has just hit theaters, and it's unlikely to go unnoticed. It's the kind of film that sparks endless discussion. Because ultimately, the question isn't "Who's right?" It's "What makes us think we are?"
And this, in an era where distinguishing reality from fiction is becoming increasingly difficult, that's the question that matters.
