Bugonia: Monsters or Madmen?

 

Yorgos Lanthimos knows exactly how to get us into trouble. On one hand, it’s hard to tell whether Bugonia, his latest film, is a thriller, a comedy, a horror movie, or a piece of science fiction. On the other, Lanthimos forces us into the uneasy position of choosing between believing a delusional conspiracy theorist, Teddy, played masterfully by Jesse Plemons, or Michelle Fuller, a cold and ruthless CEO from a Big Pharma corporation, portrayed brilliantly by Emma Stone.

Teddy insists that Fuller is an alien and that her species’ mission is to wipe out humanity. He then launches a plan to kidnap her and use her as leverage to negotiate the fate of the planet. Bugonia could easily be one of the most delirious dark comedies we’ve seen, and yet, by Lanthimos’s standards, it may be one of his most accessible and “moderate” films.

Stone and Plemons unleash the wildest impulses of their characters in a comedy that makes us laugh at things we probably shouldn’t. The truth is undeniable: this is one of the strangest films of the year, and Lanthimos has crafted every detail to turn it into a genuine gem for posterity.

Lanthimos’s brilliance places us in a tight crossroads where not only is it hard to choose a side, it’s hard to know what to believe. On one hand, he shows us the terrifying madness running through the minds of conspiracy theorists flooding the internet; on the other, he exposes the cold and ruthless manipulation of powerful corporations and their contempt for lower classes, something as real as it is chilling.

Every detail of Bugonia, from the script and performances to the cinematography and score, is handled with meticulous obsession by Lanthimos, who unleashes the madness of his protagonists, wields imagery with majestic precision, and uses music to heighten the force of his tale. Without a doubt, Jerskin Fendrix’s work composing the score is nothing short of genius.

It’s clear that Bugonia stands among the best films of 2025. It’s clear that Plemons and Stone deliver two of the finest performances we’ll see this year. It’s also clear that Bugonia shares the brilliance of masterpieces like Signals, Parasite, Melancholia, and Gummo, and that Lanthimos is a master of ambiguity, navigating genres without being trapped by any of them and playing (or, really, messing) with our minds in deeply sinister ways.

Bugonia not only secures its place among the year’s finest films. It stands as a key work of contemporary cinema, and in a year that brought us Sinners, The Monkey, Bring Her Back, and Weapons, that’s no small feat.