In ‘Bugonia,’ humans can destroy themselves all on their own

Over the past few years, a shorthand has emerged for Yorgos Lanthimos films – is this a “nasty Yorgos?” Or a “nice Yorgos?”

That’s a little simplistic (nastiness exists in all Lanthimos films), but there’s a reason the dichotomy exists. The Oscar-winning “Poor Things” is probably the best example of the latter, while last year’s anthology “Kinds of Kindness” was as nasty as they come. That film involves a section where a police officer (Jesse Plemons) believes that his wife (Emma Stone) is not who she says she is, launching the couple into a series of increasingly violent tests. 

Lanthimos’ new film “Bugonia,” based on the South Korean film “Save the Green Planet!,” shares a lot in common with the middle section of “Kinds of Kindness,” and not just because it also stars Plemons and Stone. Plemons stars as Teddy, a beekeeper/conspiracy theorist who believes that Michelle Fuller (Stone), the CEO of the pharmaceutical company he works for, is actually part of an alien species called the Andromedans who have invaded Earth and forced human beings into subservience. He convinces his neurodivergent cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) to help him kidnap Michelle so they can force her to make her overlords go back where they came from. 

While “Bugonia” is funny, and caustic, and violent in all the typical Lanthimos ways, it also might be one of his most somber films to date. For as silly as “Bugonia” can be, it is also a deeply sad exploration of one man’s conspiracy-filled journey to right a great wrong. But Teddy is looking for the villain to his story in all the wrong places. Insisting that aliens are the reason for all the world’s ills is far easier than reckoning with the fact that humans – including Teddy himself – don’t need outside help when it comes to total destruction. 

Acting in any Lanthimos movie is a tightrope. His style is affected, his worlds often characterized by larger than life production design and a hyper stylized camera. But “Bugonia” feels more recognizable than other Lanthimos films, from Teddy and Don’s cramped, dilapidated home to the pristine offices of Michelle’s company. As Teddy rides his bike through rural streets surrounded by lush greenery, the only sign that something is horribly wrong is Jerskin Fendrix’s loud, disquieting score. 

Will Tracy, who wrote the screenplay for “Bugonia,” crafts characters that are as silly as they are damaged, as cruel as they are sympathetic. But the tension between Plemons and Stone, both in their performances and their characters, creates a mesmerizing back and forth where you constantly find yourself unsure of who is worse. While Teddy is ostensibly the sillier (and more violent) character, Plemons plays him with the utmost sincerity. Teddy wholeheartedly believes that aliens walk among us, that they are impersonating us with the sole intent of bringing us to our knees. Tracy eases us into the lengths that Teddy is willing to go to in order to achieve his goal, allowing us to laugh at his beliefs and his attempts to get in shape for the kidnapping. But, when he convinces his all-too trusting cousin to chemically castrate himself – better to eliminate any and all distractions, Teddy says – that laughter slowly fades out. 

Everything that Teddy does – both stupid and otherwise – stems from a place of pain and rage. Yes, he believes that Michelle is an alien, but Michelle also heads the company that’s behind his mother’s (Alicia Silverstone) illness. Yes, Teddy chemically castrated himself “for the cause,” but the underlying reason becomes deafeningly clear when a former babysitter-turned-cop (Stavros Halkias) comes back into the picture. When Don asks Teddy if they’ll get caught, he says no, because “no one on Earth gives a single f*ck about us.” Teddy believes that, and it’s hard to blame him given that all he has endured has only ever been met with stone cold ambivalence. 

Knowing all of this doesn’t change the fact that Teddy is a buffoon, one Plemons plays with deep empathy. Stone is playing the inverse: an ostensibly serious person who’s really not that serious at all. When we first meet Michelle, she’s making her way, blank-faced, through her morning routine. She does red-light therapy, and stares at her flawless features in the mirror with deadened eyes. She does yoga before transitioning into some form of martial arts, her zen transforming into cold fury – and she does this all before she leaves for work in the morning. 

The fact is, billionaires do kind of act like aliens. After she’s been kidnapped and her head fully shaved – something she seems remarkably calm about – Michelle works Teddy using corporate lingo that will make anyone who has ever had to sit through a workplace training video bristle. When Teddy explains to her his belief that she is, in fact, an alien, she responds with: “I hear where you’re coming from, and I respectfully disagree.” Michelle alternatively begs, plays along, or works Teddy’s emotional state to try and maintain power in a situation where she would otherwise have none. In other words, these two messed with the wrong girl boss CEO. 

While the relationship between Teddy and Michelle forms the core tension of the film, the heart of “Bugonia” lies within both characters’ interactions with Don. When Don starts to have doubts about whether they’ve done the right thing, Teddy warns him of Michelle’s adeptness with emotional manipulation. But while Teddy is a victim of the manipulation of online conspiracy theorists, he has also mastered the art himself, having coerced the impressionable Don into committing a crime he can never come back from. Whenever Don questions Teddy’s motives, Teddy expertly maneuvers Don right back where he wants him – pliable and subservient. 

In “Bugonia,” as in life, humans are as manipulative as they come and capable of great acts of evil. At one point when Michelle is playing along with Teddy’s whole alien theory (or is she? The movie keeps you guessing as to the truth of Michelle’s identity up to the very end), she tells him that the longer she stays on Earth, the more human – AKA, the more terrible – she becomes. In moments like these, you become halfway convinced that maybe – just maybe – Teddy isn’t wrong about the existence of aliens on Earth. But by laying blame for all of human suffering at the feet of an unknown alien race, he refuses to recognize the rot at the core of humanity. 

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