Teddy Gatz is looking for an organizing principle. The lead character in Yorgos Lanthimos' latest movie Bugonia (played by Jesse Plemons) lives in his childhood home, empty except for his disabled and easily manipulated cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) and a few beehives in the garden, and he works an unfulfilling job in a local pharmaceutical packing warehouse. It's in his free time that he strives to find purpose, researching an alien race called the Andromedans who he believes are responsible for species decline on Earth – first, the bees, and, ultimately, humanity.
Years of planning have all been leading to the main event, which kicks off the movie: the kidnapping of Auxolith CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), four days before the lunar eclipse, when Teddy believes she will be able to contact her Andromedan mothership. After that, he's certain that she'll be able to get him an audience with the Andromedan emperor to negotiate a deal between the aliens and humanity and save the planet.
There are layers to his beef with Michelle, we learn. Not only is she possibly an alien responsible for Earth's destruction, but he's also an Auxolith employee – which also happens to be the company responsible for his mother's comatose state after a medical trial gone wrong. Teddy maintains that his mission is in service of the greater good, but it's impossible to disentangle the personal from the political.
Playing with expectation
Some of Bugonia's funniest moments are in its skewering of corporate culture. Michelle is insistent that her employees go home at 5.30pm to avoid burnout and foster a healthy environment, for example, but only if there's no more work to be done. Her cringe girlboss-esque persona is hammered home by a humorous needledrop of Chappell Roan's 'Good Luck, Babe!' and, in these moments, Bugonia is often as subtle as a (very entertaining) ton of bricks.
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But, in other moments, it suddenly sharpens into something more unnerving and interesting. With Michelle's kidnapping the movie cleverly plays with our expectations around gender and class. Alien or not, we're constantly reminded that Michelle is an unscrupulous, uber-wealthy CEO, but the film weaponizes Stone's femininity and vulnerability – Teddy forces Don to shave her head because he believes her long hair allows her to be traced by the Andromedan mothership – to muddle where our sympathies should lie. When Teddy is violent towards Michelle, it's distressing to watch, but Michelle's company has been responsible for far worse violence, not just in Teddy's home but in the community as a whole. What are we meant to do with all that information?
Stone and Plemons are on top forms here, and they bounce off each other deliciously. Both are perfect with their roles, with their backgrounds in both comedy and drama allowing them to veer between absurdity and tragedy with an easy self-assurance. Bugonia marks Lanthimos' second collaboration with Plemons and his fifth with Stone, and he knows exactly how to get the best out of his actors.
Hard truths
Bugonia would make for an interesting double bill with another 2025 release: Ari Aster's violent madcap COVID Western, Eddington. Both movies are about angry people turning to the internet for meaning (and, in fact, Aster was a producer on Bugonia), but Bugonia is a less cynical beast. It's less actively anti-social media, for one thing; there's passing mention that Teddy first discovered the Andromedans on YouTube and that he "creates content" about the subject, but other than that there's little depiction of the internet or technology. It's not encouraging us to laugh at Teddy in the same way that we're meant to ridicule Joaquin Phoenix's unravelling sheriff, and instead we're forced to wonder just what, exactly, we feel towards him – and Michelle, and Don.
Both movies ask their audiences to examine what it means to live in a world where both everything and nothing is true, but, to me, Bugonia does this much more effectively by keeping us on our toes and not letting our sympathies sit too long with either of its leads. The great tragic irony of Bugonia is that it soon becomes apparent that no one can win, but that doesn't stop Teddy and Michelle going to any lengths possible to come out on top.
Bugonia is out now in theaters. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
