'Bugonia' Review: Lanthimos and Stone Deliver Another Brilliantly Bizarre Satire
- Alex Gilston
- Oct 13
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 28
By Alex Gilston - October 13, 2025
Extra-terrestrial life has been confirmed to exist, albeit not in the way we might have expected from generations of hypothesizing about green men with globe-shaped heads. People still believe that this type of alien could exist beyond the cosmos. But if they did exist, would they help us in our time of need? In Bugonia, the latest from madcap filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) thinks an alien is the key to why the world is so disaster-bound. Still, there is no confirmation beyond his beliefs that CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is one. Is she or isn’t she is Bugonia’s focal question, which plunges the film into Lanthimos’ now famous unsettling depths.
What is the film 'Bugonia' About?
Teddy is a parcel dispatch worker who lives with his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). He believes that the CEO of Michelle Fuller is a high-ranking alien sent to Earth to destroy the human race. Enlisting the help of his cousin, Teddy kidnaps Michelle and locks her in his basement to prove that she is an alien in the hopes that she can take him to her leader to negotiate on behalf of all humans. Teddy is completely clued up on the type of tactics the aliens he knows can use to pull one over on humans, so he trains Don alongside himself so that Michelle can’t take advantage of them. They shave her hair, cover her in anti-histamine cream, and tie her to a camp bed to make sure she can’t escape. The setup is militant but frantic; Teddy and Don are inexperienced and lack the finesse to pull their heist off easily. The pace of Bugonia in these moments fits the motions that the characters go through.
Once Michelle is apprehended, Bugonia takes a turn and becomes more of a chamber piece. As the characters begin to get to know each other, the pacing slows down as these conversations get given time to breathe. It’s in these moments where characters' motivations are unpicked bit by bit, and there’s a quietness to it. But bubbling underneath those are uncomfortably chaotic moments, which accentuate the slow-natured middle section of Bugonia to remind you of the absurdity of what you are viewing.
Unsurprisingly, the writer of The Menu would take on a topic like the one in Bugonia, Will Tracy is clearly trying to put the world to rights with his words. There is biting commentary about the exploitation of working-class people by the rich CEO’s of multi-million dollar companies, underpinned by an interesting exploration of our hurtling towards environmental armageddon. It also feels pertinent that Teddy is a major conspiracy theorist, the whole reason the plot sets off down the lane, and how it pertains to how our minds can be exploited by pipelines online through tailored algorithms. All of these converge perfectly to make sure Bugonia’s finger is on the pulse of society.
That being said, Bugonia still works tremendously as a thriller. We, as an audience, are aligned with Teddy, but he’s less of a protagonist and more of an antagonist; the emotional beats all flow through him. This means that as he’s questioning whether Michelle is an alien, we are too. This back and forth is quite playful and does keep you guessing right up until the final moments of the film. The crescendo is exactly what you’d come to expect from a Yorgos Lanthimos film, insane in all the right ways. It also adds an interesting, albeit pessimistic, tinge to the films as a whole.
The performances in Bugonia are part of its brilliance. Jesse Plemons snuggles perfectly into his usual weird little guy persona, and it has peaks and troughs. At times, you feel genuinely sorry for him, that he’s just a victim of his circumstances, but equally, Teddy has a sadistic side where he takes things too far, and Plemons switches with ease. It’s hard to believe that this is Aidan Delbis’s first credited role in a film. His character, Don, is the emotional anchor of the film; he is a huge part of Teddy’s motivations, but also gets a chance to connect to Michelle, and the scenes between him and Emma Stone are top-notch. As for Stone, she may be out in another award-worthy turn as Michelle. She goes full She-EO girlboss, with the perfect corporate tone, almost robot-like. Her potential alien side comes out now and again, and quite like Plemons, it’s a switch she can simply turn. In one moment, you might think she is in the backseat, but she completely takes control and leads the way.
Is 'Bugonia' Worth Watching?
Bugonia is a Greek sentiment that bees manifest from the carcasses of dead oxen. It’s paradoxical in that death breeds life and vice versa, but it is quite pessimistic, and at the heart of it, Bugonia is about the inevitability of our self-destruction as a society. It doesn’t instill confidence in where we are heading by any stretch of the imagination, but it acts as more of a wake-up call. Despite all of these issues, there is a spiritual sense that we might be able to overcome them. It’s an impossible situation, and it’s kind of an impossible film, but if the bees can transcend that impossibility, then maybe so can we.
Bugonia will be released in UK cinemas 31 October 2025
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