Bugonia sits in the corner of alien cinema that I almost always find irresistible, then keeps asking whether it even wants to be an alien movie. Yorgos Lanthimos builds the hook around two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO because they are convinced she is an extraterrestrial plant. The idea promises pulp and paranoia. The execution keeps toggling between straight faced setup and a late sprint of grisly chaos.
Jesse Plemons leads the film as Teddy, an obsessive beekeeper whose logic turns on queens, hives, and years of unresolved pain. He is grieving a mother lost during a drug trial and living with the fallout of childhood abuse, which hardens his worldview until everything looks like a plot. Plemons plays the insecurity and control in quiet, convincing beats. The real sting is that Teddy has pulled his cousin Don, played by newcomer Aidan Delbis, into the plan. Delbis gives Don a shy focus that tracks within the scheme, even if the script rarely lets him stand toe to toe with the stars.
Lanthimos stretches the first half on purpose. The kidnapping and lock-in play out with a near procedural patience that dares you to sit with the obviousness of the men’s logic. At 118 minutes the film is not long, yet the early stretch can feel like hovering. The charge arrives later, when the neatly constructed plan starts to unravel and the imagery turns sharper and more bloodied. A final ten minutes twist the frame in a way I admired, the rare ending that reframes what came before without pretending it all fit.
The director’s disdain here feels broad and apocalyptic rather than aimed at a couple of petty monsters. Humanity needs saving from itself, and maybe the planet needs saving from us too. I have not seen Save the Green Planet! which Bugonia riffs on, but the title alone suggests why the theme might punch harder in that source. Lanthimos works better for me when genre corrals his impulses, and this has the benefit of a cleaner spine than Kinds of Kindness and parts of Poor Things. Even the flourishes feel guided rather than indulgent.
As ever with alien adjacent stories, the movie invites comparison to the canon. Close Encounters, E.T., Nope, They Live, The Thing, even Asteroid City all take wildly different routes to the same sky. Bugonia is minor by that measure, but there are sequences that hum. Plemons finds a prickly pathos, the violence lands with bruising clarity, and the theme does not completely smother the fun.
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Whether it “counts” as an alien film is part of the gag, and I will not spoil that. What matters is that Lanthimos uses the premise to pry at paranoia, credulity, and the way hurt curdles into certainty. The first half plays a little too straight, the second half finally swings. I liked this space for him more than his recent detours, even if the result lands in the middle of the pack.
Score: 6/10
Bugonia (2025)
- Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone
- Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
- Genre: Comedy, Crime, Science Fiction
- Runtime: 118 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: October 31, 2025
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