Stiges 2025: ‘Bugonia’ Review
Stars: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone | Written by Will Tracy | Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Emma Stone reunites with director Yorgos Lanthimos for Bugonia, the pair’s fourth feature following their fruitful collaborations on The Favourite, Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness, as well as a short film. A remake of the 2003 South Korean comedy Save the Green Planet!, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable kidnap thriller with some delicious twists and turns.
Jesse Plemons (also back for a further Lanthimos collaboration after Kinds of Kindness) plays Teddy, a left-wing bee-keeper and conspiracy theory enthusiast who believes that pharmaceutical company Auxolith Corp is directly behind both the general state of beehive collapse and the fact that his mother (Alicia Silverstone) is in a coma after taking one of the company’s anti-opioid drugs. So far, so reasonable, but Teddy also believes that Auxolith CEO Michelle Fuller (Stone) is an alien from the planet Andromeda, so he ropes in his sweet-natured, slightly dopey cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis) and the pair stage an audacious kidnapping, holding Michelle in their cellar until she confesses and promises to leave Earth alone.
Introduced as a formidable character (her corporate video delivers some early laughs), Michelle quickly gets the measure of Teddy and tries a variety of different strategies to get out of her situation. Meanwhile, Teddy resorts to increasingly unhinged measures, shaving off her hair “so she can’t contact her mothership” and torturing her via electrocution.
Bugonia‘s sharply-written script, by Will Tracy (who co-wrote The Menu), is consistently fascinating, because neither Teddy nor Michelle are entirely sympathetic, so we’re never quite sure just whose side we’re meant to be on. That’s complicated further by the terrific central performances from both Plemons and Stone, who each find reasons to make us root for their characters, even if we increasingly think Teddy is dangerously off the rails – Plemons makes us feel his pain at every turn, and it’s heartbreaking.
Lanthimos’ direction is thrilling throughout, whether shooting the kidnap sequence in comical longshot (it doesn’t go as planned) or ratcheting up the tension and suspense in the back-and-forth between captors and captee. For the most part, the film is effectively a three-hander, but there’s strong support from Stavros Halkias as a concerned local cop who also happens to be Teddy’s former babysitter.
On a technical level, Bugonia is extremely impressive, thanks to beautiful, colour-saturated cinematography from Robbie Ryan, dynamic editing from Lanthimos’ regular collaborator Yorgos Mavropsaridis and a propulsive score from delightfully named composer Jerskin Fendrix. The dialogue is a joy too, and the film gathers speed for a riotous, fast-moving final act that will leave your jaw on the floor.
In short, Bugonia is a treat from beginning to end, a delightfully dark, blackly comic thriller with a vicious streak a mile wide. Here’s hoping Stone and Plemons both receive the awards attention they deserve.
