Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons star in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, a psychological thriller that cuts into paranoia and power through a twisted mix of humor and dread. The film follows two conspiracy-driven cousins who abduct Michelle, a pharmaceutical CEO they believe to be an alien planning Earth’s destruction. Played by Stone, Michelle quickly becomes the focal point of their delusional crusade, as Plemons’s Teddy and newcomer Aidan Delbis’s Don subject her to bizarre methods in their basement.
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The story unfolds through their escalating paranoia. Teddy drives the operation, forcing Don to shave Michelle’s head and coat her in anti-alien lotion before interrogating her about planetary extinction tied to bees and a lunar eclipse. Lanthimos pushes this confrontation into territory both grotesque and oddly moving.
Stone delivers a performance that shifts between ruthless executive and desperate captive, while Plemons embodies Teddy’s obsessive, combustible energy. Delbis, in his debut, plays Don with quiet conflict, torn between loyalty to his cousin and growing unease with their actions. This triangle gives the film its tension: each character reflects a different side of paranoia, ambition, and survival.
The script by Will Tracy, first conceived during pandemic lockdown, provides the foundation. Inspired by the Korean cult film Save the Green Planet, Tracy reimagined its premise for a contemporary context shaped by fear, isolation, and online radicalization. Lanthimos seized on the material’s volatility, shaping it into a work that veers between tragedy and absurdity without losing intensity.
Music by Jerskin Fendrix amplifies the chaos, with a 90-piece orchestra creating a sound that mirrors Teddy’s volatile state. Loud, abrasive, and unrestrained, the score underscores the sense of a battle that feels both delusional and deadly. Editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis sharpens this with cuts that plunge the viewer into the conflicting perceptions of the trio, tightening the film’s relentless grip.
Stone, producing alongside Lanthimos for the fifth time, saw the project as another chance to explore confined human conflict. For her, the basement setting serves as a crucible where warped logic and shifting power dynamics unravel into something larger. Lanthimos agrees, calling Bugonia a reflection of fractured realities, bubbles reinforced by technology, and the chasms that divide people today.
Bugonia arrives in October, with Lanthimos delivering a film that thrives on chaos and absurdity while reflecting the grip of contemporary conspiracies. Infused with dark humor and psychological tension, it distills the unsettling experience of questioning truth itself.
