You know when you watch a film by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos ("Kinds of Kindness," 2024), it’s going to get strange. Kind of like walking into a themed buffet restaurant or a zoo exhibit while the animals are having intercourse. This director loves awkward moments, pitch black comedy, and bursts of serious violence. He brings all of these things to his latest release, "Bugonia" starring Emma Stone ("Poor Things," 2023) and Jesse Plemmons ("The Power of the Dog," 2021) as sincere opponents who literally fight each other for survival.
Emma Stone plays Michelle, a wealthy CEO of a big biotechnology company who gets kidnapped from her home by two adult men who think she’s an alien in disguise planning to destroy planet Earth. This kidnapping is not for fun. It isn’t a joke. These desperate men are convinced they’re saving Earth by tying up this woman, confining her to their basement, and interrogating her to contact her interstellar alien emperor before an approaching lunar eclipse. "Bugonia" is an English language adaptation from the 2003 South Korean, science-fiction comedy, "Save the Green Planet" from director and screenwriter Jang Joon-hwan.
This film might be the closest to a thriller Yorgos Lanthimos has ever directed. The dialogue is tense, confusing, and gradually revealing. You learn why the two blue collar men are holding Michelle captive while at the same time she tries to outwit them for her escape. Instead of trying to convince her captors she isn't an alien, Michelle plays along with the mission of saving the planet and gets to know them...with some deadly results.
Are these kidnappers insane? Are they on drugs? Is Michelle's life in real danger? Or does she have an actual chance to get away? All these questions, and more, floated nervously in my head like tricky bees. And the more information these characters revealed, the more engrossed I became.
We all know we're currently still living in the officially titled Information Age with recent inventions like smart phones, industrial robots, and artificial intelligence programs on our computers. But a natural metamorphosis from the Information Age is the more nebulous misinformation age we're also living in from the constant growth of personalized online content. The misinformation age is a big part of "Bugonia's" message by showing the dangerous consequences of conspiracy theories and fringe ideas.
But even more clearly, this film is a dark metaphor of the dirty working class forcefully accusing the upper class of their destructive crimes that are so often swept into a forgotten corner. Polluting the environment or creating horribly addictive substances cannot go unnoticed from these kidnappers.
A number of conversations play out like a mental tug-of-war between Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons....and you can't discount the leverage or intelligence from the working class side of this battle. Jesse Plemmons gives an Oscar-worthy performance. Because Jesse Plemmons is so earnest and focused on his mission as the lead kidnapper, he isn't a bumbling hillbilly. He thoughtfully doesn't play his role as a joke, which makes this film all the more mysterious and realistic.
I like this film a lot. It's an odd combination of comedic, surreal, and frightening. This combination makes the whole experience of watching "Bugonia" an unpredictable one. It doesn't feel like such a huge eruption of unique morbidity. But maybe that's because I'm already familiar with this director's past films that have helped solidify this morbid style, like "The Lobster" (2015), "The Favourite" (2018), and "Poor Things" (2023).
Only one moment in this film did I correctly sense what was going to happen. The ideas and plot twists are out there (some might even use the word wacky), and they make this film less accessible for more movie watchers. But "Bugonia" isn't boring, and that's why it's such a fun time.
