BUGONIA : Tuesday 11th November 2025.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'BUGONIA' earlier this week, and this absurdist black comedy film is Co-Produced and Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos who made his feature film Directorial debut with 'My Best Friend' in 2001 and would make his English language debut with 'The Lobster' in 2015 which he would follow up with 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' in 2017, 'The Favourite' in 2018, 'Poor Things' in 2023 and 'Kinds of Kindness' in 2024. This film is an English-language remake of the 2003 South Korean film 'Save the Green Planet!' Written and Directed by Jang Joon-hwan. It had its World Premiere in the main competition of this years Venice International Film Festival at the end of August and was released here Australia and in the US at the end of October, has so far grossed US$25M on a production budget of about US$50M, and has garnered generally positive critical reviews.

Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is the high profile and subtly demanding CEO of the big pharma corporation Auxolith, whose face has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and is a darling of the media. She is seemingly unmarried and has no children. One day after arriving home from work she is abducted by conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his intellectually disabled cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Teddy and Don live in the house together that Teddy grew up in. Teddy is of the very firm belief that Michelle is a member of a malicious alien species known as the 'Andromedans' who are killing Earth's honeybees, destroying communities, and forcing humans into a numb compliance. 

Teddy and Don chain Michelle to a bunk bed in their basement, having shaved her head, and cover her head, arms and legs in a thick layer of antihistamine cream to prevent her from sending out a distress signal to other Andromedans. Teddy explains that she has four days to negotiate a meeting with the Andromedan emperor before an upcoming lunar eclipse, so permitting the Andromedan mothership to enter Earth's atmosphere undetected. 

In a flashback showing a younger Teddy caring for his mother Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), who took part in a clinical trial for an Auxolith drug that rendered her comatose. While torturing Michelle with electric shock treatment, Teddy comes to the conclusion that her high pain threshold is evidence she is actually a high-ranking member of the Andromedan royal family, and as such his stance towards her becomes more civil and less confrontational, and so he invites her upstairs for dinner, chaining her legs to a chair which is in turn chained to the floor. However, the conversation turns tense resulting in a physical fight between the two with Teddy getting stabbed in the arm with a fork and Michelle being knocked out cold by the butt of a gun held by Don. They are then interrupted by the appearance of Casey Boyd (Stavros Halkias), the local Police Sheriff and Teddy's childhood babysitter, who is searching the local area for Michelle. Meanwhile, Don returns the unconscious Michelle to the basement and chains her up again, and holds her at gunpoint while Teddy distracts Casey by showing him his apiary in their backyard. 

When Michelle comes round, she offers to help Don if he reports Teddy to the Police. Don replies that he only wants to go to outer space with Michelle, and after she promises to take him, he turns the gun on himself and shoots himself in the head. Casey, who is awkwardly apologetic for his implied sexual harassment of Teddy, hears the gunshot. Caught by surprise, Teddy kicks over one of the beehives and removes Casey's protective sleeves and head gear and is promptly covered by a swarm of bees, and then to make doubly sure, he bludgeons Casey to death with a shovel, and returns to the basement to be greeted by a very dead Don and a blood soaked Michelle. She convincingly tells a frantic Teddy that a bottle of antifreeze in her car is secretly an Andromedan antidote that will cure his mother. Teddy rushes to her car, retrieves the antifreeze and then cycles at break neck speed to the hospital and injects the antifreeze into Sandy's IV bag, killing her within a few minutes. Meanwhile, Michelle unchains herself and in her bid to escape, discovers a room where Teddy had previously abducted and killed several other people he suspected of being Andromedans.

Teddy frantically returns to the house on his push bike, where Michelle reduces him to tears by recounting an alternative version of his alien conspiracy - out of guilt over accidentally causing the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, the Andromedans created humanity and have spent thousands of years benevolently trying to guide humans away from their seemingly ingrained flawed, unhappy and destructive nature. She claims that her mothership has the information needed to save humanity, and agrees to arrange the meeting between Teddy and the Andromedan Emperor at the Auxolith HQ.

They arrive at the office on the night of the lunar eclipse with Michelle wearing a long brunette wig to conceal her shaven head, and Teddy carrying a shot gun which he hides down his trouser leg. Michelle's co-workers are very surprised to see her given that she has been missing for four days, there is a Police search and rescue team out looking for her and media coverage of her disappearance has been extensive. Once inside her office which she curtains off from view by her team, Teddy reveals himself to be wearing a suicide vest, which he activates. She pulls out a device which resembles a large desk calculator and says she needs to enter a 58 digit code to send a signal to the mothership to initiate the teleport process. Michelle instructs Teddy to enter her closet, which she claims is the location of the teleporter to her ship. As Teddy enters the closet, she counts down 3-2-1 and the suicide vest detonates, killing Teddy, with his dismembered head flying out of the closet across the room and knocking Michelle unconscious. She wakes up in an ambulance, but jumps out and runs back to her office, where she enters the closet and teleports to the Andromedan mothership.

Michelle, is now revealed as the genuine Andromedan Empress, who consults with her fellow Andromedans and together conclude that despite their best efforts the human experiment has failed. Using a pointed blade, she pops a clear dome over a model of a flat Earth, instantly killing every human on the planet, but animal life it appears still thrives. Michelle gazes out at Earth, now totally devoid of any and all human life, as bees gradually return to Teddy's apiary.

'Bugonia' is at once quirky, at times laugh out loud humorous, has something to say about the have's and the have not's of this world, is conspiracy theory fuelled, has moments of extreme violence and offers up twists and turns aplenty to maintain your interest and keep you glued to your seat until the very end. Both Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone are on top form in their roles as Teddy and Michelle respectively, and all credit to Aidan Delbis for his portrayal of Don as the beating heart and soul of the film. Yorgos Lanthimos has here crafted a film that although is a remake of a 2003 South Korean film, is nonetheless quite possibly his most mainstream effort to date and will leave you questioning what is real and what is imagined. This film won't be for everyone, but for those of us who relish in the blackly absurdist comedy genre then this would be up there as one of the must see films of the year.

'Bugonia' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-