Cover Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) finally out of Teddy’s (Jesse Plemons) basement, dining with him and Don (Aidan Delbis) in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) finally out of Teddy’s (Jesse Plemons) basement, dining with him and Don (Aidan Delbis) in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
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Is the CEO an alien? Our review of ‘Bugonia’—Yorgos Lanthimos’s absurdist black comedy thriller about paranoia, corporate evil and deep trauma
The weight of a seasoned actor’s name is often considerable, but Emma Stone carries a whole library. Her filmography is a collection of cultural markers. So when cinephiles and casual audiences approached Bugonia, her latest collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, they were ready. A wild cinematic ride awaited them, and Lanthimos, ever the master of the macabre and the mundane, delivered. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Bugonia, an absurdist black comedy thriller, is a remake of the 2003 South Korean cult hit Save the Green Planet!. Two men, Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis), kidnap Michelle Fuller (Stone), the icy CEO of the massive biotech corporation Auxolith, believing her to be an extraterrestrial entity intent on destroying the Earth. Lanthimos grounds this premise through an eco-critique: Teddy, a low-level warehouse employee and amateur beekeeper, is convinced that Auxolith’s pharmaceutical byproducts are responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder—the mysterious phenomenon of disappearing bees. His paranoia is not baseless but tethered to the tangible decay of the natural world.
In Bugonia, the absurdity of alien invasion becomes a layered allegory for ecological collapse and corporate malpractice and reveals a core of very human pain. The film is an immediate classic for Lanthimos fans, a prickly requiem for the Anthropocene.
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Above Emma Stone as Michelle Fuller, CEO of Auxolith in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
Emma Stone as Michelle Fuller, CEO of Auxolith in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
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Plemons is extraordinary as Teddy. He inhabits the role with a distressing intensity; you can somehow feel the years of simmering resentment and unravelling sanity etched onto his eyes alone. His deadpan conviction that the polished, power-suited Michelle is an alien overlord is the film’s chillingly funny anchor. Stone’s portrayal of Michelle is lethally cold, a portrait of capitalist ruthlessness. She handles her imprisonment with a cycling sequence of imperious demands, cautious diplomacy and eventual, mocking agreement to the accusation.
The physical comedy, however, is a lot of fun to watch. The kidnapping sequence itself, a whirlwind of awkward movements outside Michelle’s sleek, modern abode, is a highlight. The scene is unforced, transforming a violent act into a clumsy dance. Since then, the verbal exchanges between Stone and Plemons sparkle. Their lines flow naturally—the chemistry lies perhaps in the utter disconnect between their characters’ opposing realities.
One of the film’s sharpest moments happens during a conversation between Teddy and Don, where they question the morality of their extreme actions. Teddy, unwavering, casually dismisses the existential crisis: even if Michelle is human, she is still “evil”—albeit “corporate evil.” Don, intellectually challenged and easily swayed by Teddy’s elaborate conspiracies, serves as the tragic sidekick, an unsettling mirror to how easily vulnerable individuals can be manipulated. His loyalty to Teddy grounds the duo’s partnership in a bleak realism. When Don’s guilt finally surfaces, it culminates in one of the film’s most shocking moments—his suicide before Michelle.
Above Don (Aidan Delbis) and Teddy (Jesse Plemons) in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
Don (Aidan Delbis) and Teddy (Jesse Plemons) in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
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Michelle’s admission that she is, in fact, an alien (intended to manipulate her way out) is brilliantly subverted when the ultimate revelation confirms that she truly is one. This twist, however, is immediately deepened by a far more horrifying human truth: her escape attempt uncovers evidence of Teddy’s history as a serial kidnapper, suggesting the audience has been watching a disturbed criminal, not simply an obsessed son.
The scene revealing Teddy’s mother, Sandy Gatz (Alicia Silverstone), was a victim of Michelle’s company (her present coma a direct result), humanises Teddy’s initial derangement. Her subsequent realisation, seeing the house and her attempt to psychologise the situation—offering compensation even as the company pays medical bills—is a stroke of cold-blooded corporate deflection. Teddy’s own trauma, including a previous disastrous run-in with the police, can somehow explain his conspiratorial fixation, perhaps clinging desperately to the alien narrative as a simple framework for his complex grief and rage.
See also: Movie review: You can’t lose with Quezon—unless you’re not on his side
Above Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is accused of being an alien in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is accused of being an alien in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
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Robbie Ryan’s cinematography heightens the unease; the colour palette, rich yet unsettling, forms a perfect canvas for the escalating chaos. The film closes on a haunting note, with Where Have All the Flowers Gone playing over humanity’s extinction, but not before Michelle ascends to her “mothership,” revealed as the Empress of the Andromedans (the alien Teddy truly believed she was) and condemns the human race after witnessing its self-destruction through greed and decay. When she bursts the translucent globe cradling Earth, life ends bloodlessly—corpses strewn across boardrooms and fields and parks and beaches. As the song fades, bees drift back to their hives, hinting at renewal.
Lanthimos leans heavily into classical myth to give the narrative its title and texture. “Bugonia” itself, derived from ancient Greek, refers to a ritual in which bees were believed to be born from the carcass of a sacrificed ox, a cruel act yielding improbable new life. Screenwriter Will Tracy describes it as a metaphor for “new life arising from the ashes of corruption.” The myth aligns with Lanthimos’s cinematic ethos: decay birthing absurdity, horror transfigured into meaning. Here, perhaps the bees become a symbol—humanity perishes, but the natural order quietly restores itself.
Above Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don’s (Aidan Delbis) first conversation with Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don’s (Aidan Delbis) first conversation with Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) in Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘Bugonia’ (Photo: courtesy of Universal Pictures)
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Bugonia does not possess the whimsy of Poor Things nor the emotional chill of The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Instead, it is a darkly humorous examination of modern human decay, conspiracy culture and the crushing weight of unchecked corporate power. It is also, in its own bizarre way, a requiem for the Anthropocene—a recognition that the end of humanity may be the planet’s only reprieve.
Lanthimos has fashioned a peculiar, unsettling and entertaining beast.
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Angela Nicole Regis Guiral is the assistant digital editor of Tatler Philippines. She studied journalism and has since written features that look closely at how culture, lifestyle and social impact converge, while occasionally wandering into the worlds of style and travel.
