It feels safe to say at this point that filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is a bit of a sicko. From Dogtooth to The Lobster to The Killing of a Sacred Deer to Poor Things, Lanthimos regularly delivers bizarre, twisted, provocative, and uncompromising cinematic experiences, and we love him for this. He continues his journey of getting acclaimed actors to embody eccentric characters in wackadoo storylines with Bugonia, a remake of Save the Green Planet!, the South Korean film from 2003. Having not seen the original movie, I didn’t quite know what I was in for, but I’m happy to say that Lanthimos continues to be very silly in the realm of intensely dark scenarios.

Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, and according to Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), she’s also an alien. Teddy and Don have uncovered the truth that Michelle is an Andromedan and that her species is responsible for the global collapse of humanity. By kidnapping her, they hope to be humanity’s last stand in confronting the Andromedans to convince them to let their planet thrive, despite Michelle being less than agreeable to the notion of being an alien.

Between Bugonia and Eddington, 2025 has been a big year for darkly comedic satires about the brainrot people can get from the internet. While Ari Aster’s movie might have felt a bit more grounded, as it was more connected to real-world events in 2020, Teddy feels just as real as anyone from that movie. This is a credit both to Plemons’s performance and to Will Tracy‘s script. Sadly, seeing a man so convinced that what he’s seeing in the mainstream media is all a conspiracy and only he can see the truth, even if that truth means we’ve been invaded by aliens, reminds us that people like this are really out there and you may have even crossed paths with some of them. Lanthimos, Plemons, and Tracy all managed to make Teddy just the right amount of charming, deranged, and intimidating. Stone unsurprisingly delivers another impressive performance in a Lanthimos film, as Michelle clearly had not only the business aptitude but also the social prowess to climb the ranks of her industry, using these conversational skills and power dynamics to try to convince Teddy she’s not an alien, while also saying anything she can that might help her escape.

Bugonia is undeniably a black comedy, though its concept and some key sequences definitely toe the line of the horror genre. A key component of the movie is that, with Lanthimos having a track record of absurdist stories, the audience is meant to question if maybe Teddy actually has a point. While each and every scene is engaging to watch, as Plemons and Stone verbally spar with one another, the crux of the film is the binary question of whether Michelle is or is not an alien. Other, more genre-leaning movies like 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Invitation, I Trapped the Devil, and even Take Shelter similarly make a viewer question if the outlandish beliefs of the more extreme characters are genuine or artificial. The inherent drawback of Bugonia and the nature of its plot is that, at some point, the film will likely reveal the truth of the situation, with the answer being one of two options. Even though everything leading up to this reveal is thrilling and hilarious, I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed in the film’s finale; while I had assumed there would only be one of two answers, I had hoped Lanthimos would surprise me with an answer I wasn’t at all expecting, given his track record of unexpected narratives.

No matter what type of story he’s telling, Lanthimos uses his movies as both literal narratives and also as allegories for bigger, broader human experiences. There’s the more obvious exploration of what happens when you buy into conspiracy theories and how blurry the line is between harmless speculation and real-world terror, but with Teddy being motivated by personal trauma caused by Michelle’s pharmaceutical company, as well as the collapse of the environment, Lanthimos is commenting on the greed of massive companies and how humanity can’t seem to save itself. Whether it be the ways various communities treat one another or how we have abandoned any regard for the well-being of the longevity of the planet, Lanthimos questions whether humanity really is responsible for all of the plights we’re facing, whether it’s actually otherworldly forces at play, or whether the planet is even worth saving in the first place, given the ways people treat one another.

Bugonia is both one of Lanthimos’s more accessible movies, given how grounded the narrative is, and also one of his most abrasive, given how darkly comedic so much of the experience is. While you’ll be chuckling with discomfort in one scene as Michelle tries to convince Teddy she’s not an alien, you’ll recoil in the next scene when you see the lengths Teddy is willing to go to physically prove Michelle is an Andromedan by subjecting her to different forms of torture. One thing I love about Lanthimos, though, is that Bugonia feels nothing like his other movies, while also feeling entirely like his sensibilities, and no matter how you react to his latest movie, it likely won’t be long before we get an entirely different experience from him that you might connect with more strongly or be less engaged by. The man simply won’t stop working and we love the weird sicko for it!

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