Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone (Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness) reunite once again, this time for Bugonia — a film that, on the surface, plays like the usual Lanthimos absurdist romp, but quickly veers into something far darker, stranger and more unsettling than we’ve seen from the Greek filmmaker before. It’s a film that’s absurd in the truest sense: an outrageous satire about belief, paranoia and the violence that often hides beneath conviction.
The premise is simple — two conspiracy theorists, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis), kidnap Emma Stone’s Michelle Fuller, a powerful tech CEO they believe to be an alien planning Earth’s destruction. What follows is an escalating, claustrophobic comedy of errors. In lesser hands, the concept might collapse under its own ridiculousness, but the director’s signature tone — that uneasy mix of deadpan humour and grotesque characters — keeps everything teetering on the edge of brilliance.
Lanthimos has always been fascinated by the absurd extremes of human behaviour, and Bugonia continues that fascination with that same precision. There’s something almost cruelly funny about how far Teddy and Don go in their delusion with absolute conviction. The violence they enact toward Stone’s character is disturbing — even by Lanthimos standards — and yet it’s this brutality that ultimately drives home the acclaimed filmmaker’s vision. Beneath the weirdness lies a clear-eyed critique of fanaticism, the need to believe in something, no matter how irrational it may be.
Emma Stone, as ever, is electrifying. She oscillates between terror, charm and biting sarcasm, giving the film its wild tonal shifts throughout. Plemons gives one of his most layered performances yet, proving once again that he is the real deal.
If Bugonia slips up anywhere, it’s when the weirdness starts to feel a bit self-satisfied. A few scenes drag out their oddness, and some of the big ideas don’t land quite as hard as they think they do. Yet by the time the ending comes — shocking, cathartic and unexpectedly moving — those flaws feel more than necessary. The final ten minutes transform the film’s chaos into something strangely profound, delivering the kind of hilarious payoff that reminds you why Lanthimos remains one of the most distinctive filmmakers of this generation.
Lanthimos’ absurdist worldview has never felt sharper or more relevant, and Stone continues to prove she’s his ideal muse. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a fascinating one.
