Teddy: “A degree from a university? From a credentialist scam for laundering privilege? Amazing.”
Sometimes a movie doesn’t fit nicely within a genre box. In today’s case, the film touches on bizarre sci-fi dialogue, brings forth some satirical dark comedy, plenty of drama and thrills, and centers on a crime. . . in other words, it’s another unique vision from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster; The Favourite) – titled Bugonia (2025). . . inspired by the 2003 South Korean motion picture Save the Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan.
Falling down the rabbit hole with Teddy (Jesse Plemons – Hostiles; Game Night) and his autistic cousin/helpful sidekick Don (Aidan Delbis – an excellent amateur casting of an autistic man), they have done copious amounts of research on the recesses of the internet into an alien species called the Andromedans – that are supposedly secretly residing amongst us while pulling the puppet strings.
After dwelling on this for so very long, Teddy believes that he has discovered one of them, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone – La La Land; The Favourite) – who just so happens to be the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that also dabbles in many other business areas. Their goal: to kidnap her and use her as a bargaining chip in order to get beamed up onto their space ship in order to negotiate their immediate departure from planet Earth.
Muddying the already murky waters, Fuller’s company also happens to be the owners of where Teddy works (in the package processing department), their drugs have severely damaged his mother Sandy (Alicia Silverstone) – leaving her in a coma, while Teddy’s side passion project, being an apiarist, has also been impacted by some of the chemicals her company has developed. To make matters worse, after all of the hardships, his father flew the coop, meaning the only family left in Teddy’s life is his cousin.
Oddly enough, the abduction of the powerful woman goes off without a hitch, leading to a rather intense tête-à-tête between Teddy and Michelle – while Don stands by as a quiet guard. Funnily enough, all of this is happening three days before a full lunar eclipse (which fits into Teddy’s vision of what is going on). Though not highly educated, Teddy is not dumb (the opening quotation highlighting this), while the CEO is a psychology grad who is as sharp as a tack – a woman who looks at every possible avenue and outcome. . . a fast thinker who will try any clever ruse to escape. It doesn’t help that a local police officer, Casey Boyd (Stavros Halkias) has a long dark past with Teddy, and is looking to make amends with the man. Will anything come of this rather ill-timed appearance from the cop? Could the officer be the only chance for Michelle to escape? Is Teddy’s behaviour at all excusable after what has happened in his torturous past? And, perhaps most unlikely, could any of Teddy’s online findings be true?
Dynamic in its commentary, Bugonia is an in depth observation on bees and how, in many ways, our capitalist system is set up in a similar fashion. . . with everyone working for the Queen (in this case, Michelle Fuller). It is rather self evident that in nature, as in business, it is important to have a healthy and happy hive working for you. Some of the clever satire comes from Fuller trying to change their corporate messaging to be more ‘family friendly’. . . only for it to be juxtaposed with a confounding reminder that they can still stay later to complete tasks if they have more work to do. It also makes some rather dark observations about humanity (cruelty being one such example), class divisions, corporate greed, trauma, and, of course, some intriguing commentary on conspiracy theories.
Featuring superb performances (Emma Stone had her head shaved on camera for this role), fantastic visuals (they mostly used vintage VistaVision film cameras to shoot), and a unique score (composer Jerkin Fendrix was not allowed to read the script or see the film – Lanthimos only provided him with three words for inspiration: bees, basement, and spacecraft), Bugonia is a thought-provoking feature this Awards season. It also has a few striking black and white scenes saved for flashbacks. So, make sure to believe the buzz on this feature, as it doesn’t deserve to be hidden in the closet.