Movie Review: Bugonia

4.5 stars out of 5

This is the best Yorgos Lanthimos film that Yorgos didn’t write himself. (I’m looking at you, well-received Poor Things and The Favourite.) It best captures the very dark comedy that permeates his own scripts. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that Will Tracy wrote the screenplay, as I wasn’t too impressed with his previous co-write, The Menu. And then was less surprised to learn that Tracy adapted the screenplay from the 2003 Korean movie Save the Green Planet!, which I’m going to check if it’s streaming anywhere once my new FireStick arrives in the mail.

Bugonia reunites the dream team of Lanthimos, Emma Stone, and Jesse Plemons from 2024’s super-dark Kinds of Kindness (and is the fourth time Yorgos and Emma have collaborated). On the surface level, it’s a satire of both corporate America and of conspiracy culture, with Stone note-perfect as a cold-blooded but always smiling CEO who always knows what to say, and Plemons nearly matching her as an aluminum-foil-on-the-windows The Truth Is Out There type. But the revelation here may be newcomer Aidan Delbis, Plemons’ devoted buddy who gives off some serious “Tell me about the rabbits, Lenny” vibes. Delbis emanates sweetness, trust, and innocence, while agonizing over making his own difficult decisions.

This is a fun, funny, hard to guess what will happen movie-watching experience. And just when I was thinking, “Am totally enjoying this, but Yorgos will really need to stick the landing to take it another level,” by god he did! A perfect extended Lanthimos sequence. Be going to Bugonia, you guys!