Bugonia

UK Release Date. 7 November 2025
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 
Director. Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast. Aidan Delbis, Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone.
Rating. 66%

Review.

While some filmmakers spend their lives crafting love letters to the world they create, Yorgos Lanthimos seems to have developed a penchant for cinematic hate mail towards humanity. There are few redeeming qualities in the back catalogue of the distinctive Greek director - Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer.

Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film, Bugonia, a couple of weeks ahead of the release date, as part of the 69th BFI London Film Festival. 

Working with the screenwriter Will Tracy, Lanthimos has reimagined the 2003 Jang Joon-hwan’s film, Save The Green Planet, but I must admit I was also reminded of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, by the tongue-in-cheek portentous chapter headings. 

Emma Stone plays the powerful and wealthy Michelle Fuller, the head of a large pharmaceutical company, and delivers a predictably strong performance. Evidently fit in mind and body, if not in morality, she’s kidnapped by Teddy (an equally impressive Jesse Plemons) and his trusting, autistic cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis). Mistrustful of mainstream media, Teddy believes Michelle is an alien and plans to hold her (and torture her) in his basement until she and her fellow Andromedans promise to leave Earth.

Primarily playing out as a chamber piece, Teddy's basement becomes a psychological battleground as Teddy becomes increasingly violent in a bid to elicit a confession from his captive, while Michelle fires back passive-aggressive corporate HR jargon. Comparisons with Lanthimos' Dogtooth and Rob Reiner's Misery are inevitable. A strength of Dogtooth was the suffocating tension of the family home as an oppressive prison; Bugonia flirts with that claustrophobia, but never quite recaptures the same essence. The film does manage, however, to balance various genres effectively, blending black comedy with science fiction and horror. Such a mix of very different genre conventions and elements may seem improbable, but in Bugonia, all fit very well with the context of the story.

However, for me, the macabre Bugonia doesn’t have the ingenuity of The Lobster, or the elegance of The Favourite, or the emotional generosity, and sheer audacity, of Lanthimos' delirious steampunk fantasy, Poor Things. With such a talented cast and such an intriguing premise, Bugonia could have been so much better. Instead, it feels like the story has not reached its full potential. The final act loses momentum with a superfluous conclusion, only to leave the audience with a haunting, nihilistic final montage.