Review: ‘Bugonia’
2025 / Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
☆ 4/5
Watch if you like: The Favourite, Eddington, They Live, and being absolutely certain that lizard people are the reason why your health insurance sucks and you don’t get paid enough.
A smaller, tighter chamber drama compared to some of his most recent works, Lanthimos’ latest—a remake of a 2003 Korean film—follows two cousins (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who kidnap a CEO (Emma Stone) they are convinced is an alien out to destroy the world. Whether she is or not, Bugonia nails the seismic chasm growing between the rich and everyone else in this country. Driven by the tit-for-tat verbal battles jockeying for power, the film’s standout is Plemons, who disappears into his role as a man damaged by the world and “rescued” by conspiracy theories. Bugonia may not reach the absurdist heights of Poor Things, but it’s a poignant addition to the recent wave of “late-stage capitalism” cinema we’ve seen this past year.