"Both Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons deliver extraordinary performances, fully committing to their characters’ beliefs and emotional logic"

It’s been a busy few years for Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s collaborations, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down with the release of Bugonia, presented this year at the London Film Festival.

In classic Lanthimos style, Bugonia offers an eccentric yet captivating premise.

Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is on a mission to save the bees—and the planet. With the help of his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), he hatches a plan to kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of the company he works for. The reason? According to his “research,” she’s an alien collecting information on humans so her species can destroy Earth.

As stories go, this setup provides the perfect landscape for Lanthimos’ creativity to bask in absurdity and allegory. Through extreme situations, he invites audiences to reflect on real-world anxieties.

The film amplifies genuine social and cultural phenomena by exaggerating them—yet what it shows never feels too far from reality.

Bugonia touches on the rise of online conspiracy communities, the widespread mistrust of media outlets accused of corruption and government bias, and the toxic corporate environments that demand endless productivity while offering the illusion of worker agency.

However, the film deliberately refuses to take sides. It doesn’t attempt to prove who’s right or wrong, but rather explores how both realities feed each other and coexist on the same level. The real victims, Lanthimos suggests, are the ordinary people trapped in between—those unaware of how they’re caught in the cycle.

Both Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons deliver extraordinary performances, fully committing to their characters’ beliefs and emotional logic. Their work is physical, unsettling, and moving, making it easy for the audience to understand what drives each of them.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the ending slightly undermines the film’s central critique. Yet, given that Bugonia never chooses a side, veering toward an absurd finale might be the only way to leave the audience with a faint glimmer of hope—that perhaps, somehow, the Earth can still be saved.