We live in an age where it has become infinitely easier for people to lead lives that are wholly divorced from any semblance of reality. Conspiracy theories run rampant, science denial is en vogue, and there is a vast media ecosystem filled with charlatans encouraging others to “do their own research” instead of believing well-educated experts. It can be hard to see anything funny about a world where it often feels like the capitalist powers that be are hell-bent on speedrunning society into a new dark age of anti-intellectualism. But Bugonia — Yorgos Lanthimos’ new remake of South Korean director Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet! — is a masterful example of why, sometimes, you really do just have to laugh at how utterly batshit things are right now.
Though Bugonia cleaves very closely to the original story it’s adapted from, the new film shifts its details just enough to make it feel like Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy have crafted a uniquely American tale about the dangerous allure of conspiracy theories. The feature shapeshifts with an impressive, Parasite-esque nimbleness that keeps each of its narrative modes — comedy, body horror, psychological thriller — in constant focus. Just when you think that Bugonia can’t get any more grueling or heartbreaking, its story plunges into new depths of stomach-turning dread. But for all of its darkness, Bugonia is also funny as hell, and its lead performances are nothing short of tremendous.
Set in a small US town that’s been impacted by the opioid crisis, Bugonia revolves around disgruntled fulfillment center worker Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons). Like many of his neighbors, Teddy spends his days toiling for a megacorporation that views its employees as faceless cogs as opposed to people with hopes and dreams. Teddy would much rather spend his time tending to his small, backyard farm of bees, but he needs his hourly gig to take care of Don (Aidan Delbis), his trusting cousin. Life is simple and dreary for the pair, who live together in a dilapidated home by a forest near the city’s outskirts. But Teddy — a conspiracy theorist who spends hours inhaling unhinged YouTube videos — has a plan to turn their lives around.
It is hard for Don to make sense of Teddy’s rants about pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) being a disguised alien from the Andromeda galaxy. But Don loves his cousin, which makes it easy for him to accept the strange diatribes. As Teddy tells it, Michelle is actually an emissary who has been sent to Earth on a mission to destroy humanity by way of decimating the planet’s population of pollinating bees. And Teddy is certain that if he and Don kidnap Michelle and chain her up in their basement, they can convince her to arrange a meeting with her emperor during an upcoming lunar eclipse.
It is clear that Teddy is deeply unwell as he explains how shaving Michelle’s hair and covering her body in drugstore ointment are necessary steps to keep her from contacting her mothership and confusing her captors with potent alien pheromones. But Bugonia spends much of its runtime exploring what sorts of things make it possible for people to become so unmoored from reality. The film presents both Teddy and Don — a duo whose dynamic strongly echoes elements of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men — as examples of ordinary men who feel abandoned by society. They need a singular figure to project their fears and anger onto because the structural forces that have truly marginalized them are too large to comprehend.
In contrast to Plemons, who brings Teddy to life with a flighty and twitchy griminess, Stone inhabits her character with a media-trained sharpness that makes you understand how someone might be able to see her as a monstrous person. Teddy’s insistence that he has enough experience hunting and dissecting “aliens” to know that Michelle is lying about being human is disconcerting on its face. But Stone plays her role with such calculating (and captivating) straightness that you’re soon left wondering whether she does actually have something to hide from the cousins.
Especially during one of Stone’s early monologues where she explains how the public might respond to a high-profile pharma executive or a governor suddenly disappearing, Bugonia feels like commentary at least partially inspired by recent real-world events. The cousins aren’t exactly vaccine deniers, but Teddy does believe that they need to shoot up with special drugs to prevent others from tampering with their minds.
Bugonia constantly highlights the objective absurdity of what’s going on with lingering shots of a bald, ointment-smeared Stone styled to resemble Max Schreck’s Count Orlok, and a countdown of title cards that gradually depict the Earth as a flat circle hovering in space. But that same absurdity and a surprising amount of well-placed slapstick helps the movie play as a comedy — even as Teddy’s plan takes a more horrific, tortuous turn.
It feels a bit wrong to call Bugonia a joyride, but if you have a stomach for the macabre and a taste for being stressed out, the movie delivers.
Bugonia also stars Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone, and Cedric Dumornay. The movie is in select theaters now and will have a broader release on October 31st.
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