by A.J.
Best Pictures #120: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
"Trust me. I've done a shit-ton of research on this."
I suffer from two compulsions: 1) I must watch every Best Picture Oscar nominee and 2) I have to watch everything Emma Stone is in. This year my dual afflictions converged with disappointing results. Bugonia has a premise that sounds intriguing but could potentially turn grim: Two cousins kidnap the CEO of a pharmaceutical company believing her to be an alien from the Andromeda galaxy here to destroy humankind. They have only four days–when they believe the mother ship will arrive–to force her to confess and cooperate. She tries to reason with them and convince them that she is not an alien. This is a science fiction premise but Bugonia is not a science fiction movie, not really. There are elements that resemble a horror movie, especially with how graphically violent it gets, but it is not a horror movie. I suppose genre-wise it is a thriller. It should be a psychological thriller, but it is not. It has some dark and awkward humor, but this is not a comedy or a satire. The only thing Bugonia is for certain is joyless and disappointing.
Emma Stone, in her fourth collaboration with Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, plays Michelle, the seemingly progressive CEO of a pharmaceutical company who uses lots of placating buzzwords and phrases (like “changing the culture” and “diversity”) and says that the staff does not need to stay after 5:30...unless they have work to finish. Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, a low level wage worker at the company, whose mother is in a hospital dying, he believes, because of the company and the nefarious alien plan. Teddy recruits the help of his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), who is reluctant but does not want to disappoint his cousin. Teddy is the ultimate example of a conspiracy theorist. He's done his own research online. He knows how to tell the signs of an alien, like narrow feet. He has created a model of what the alien ship probably looks like. Certain things he says lead us to believe that he has probably done this kidnapping and interrogation/torture before.
Bugonia seems like it is going to tackle sociopolitical issues, perhaps even satirize them, or perhaps bring them up just to be provocative. The disappointment of Bugonia is that it doesn't do much of anything; it does not even offend. It seems that Teddy's suspicions of Michelle could be rooted in that she is at the top of the food chain at the company he feels has exploited his labor and his mother's health. His suspicions could also be rooted in misogyny; Teddy convinces Don that they need to chemically castrate themselves before confronting Michelle to protect themselves from attempts at seduction. Teddy's plan is to have Michelle admit that she is an alien and then take him to the alien mother ship so he can negotiate with the alien leaders the withdrawal of secret aliens from earth. Why would they negotiate with him? Does it have to do with the delusions of grandeur and unappreciated importance that are part of believing a conspiracy theory, that your secret knowledge actually makes you special and important and significant? None of this matters because the question of whether she is an alien or not is answered definitively without any room for ambiguity. One might expect that with this are-they-or-aren’t-they premise there would be disappointment no matter what. Some viewers would prefer certainty, some would prefer ambiguity. The main thing Bugonia does, even after it answers the alien question, is bide its time until the final minutes, which are the only thing that the movie and director Lanthimos really cares about.
The best thing, honestly the only good and enjoyable thing, about Bugonia is the performances by Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. Stone received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance (her 4th Best Actress nomination, two of which she has won; her 5th total acting nomination when you count her Supporting Actress nomination for Birdman) and though I am a fan, I have to admit that I am perplexed and disappointed by the performances the Academy chooses to recognize, Bugonia included. Jesse Plemons, who was not Oscar nominated, has the real stand out performance. He elicits almost every possible reaction as his character is villainous, crazed, sympathetic, lost, over confident, and insecure. The film’s awkward sense of humor comes mainly from Plemons. Early on in her captivity, Michelle says that she wants to have a dialogue. Teddy responds that this is not Death of a Salesman. Plemons and Stone are great facing off against each other. Honestly I would rather watch them in Death of a Salesman or something similar.
That line shutting down having a dialogue really hits at the heart of the film. In Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, the protagonist, Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver), declares that "We are in need of a great debate about the future." Yorgos Lanthimos does not want to have a debate or dialogue about the future or how or if people can or should change. In all of his films he has a dour outlook of humanity at large and of what particular people deserve. Here, that message is as blunt as possible.
I despised Adam McKay's doomsday film Don't Look Up, a 2021 Best Picture nominee, which used one apocalyptic disaster (planet killing meteor impact) as a metaphor for another (climate change) while blaming the audience for not caring and dooming the earth. Yet, I can see how that film could have been meant as a non-sugarcoated wake up call to change. The final moments of this film are not meant to serve as a call to change; they are not meant to shock the audience into rethinking things. They are simply drawn out, indulgent images of doom and gloom.
The Korean film Save the Green Planet! on which Bugonia is based–not that Bugonia wants you know, as the credit for this is hidden in small font well into the closing credits–has the same conclusion but apparently different final imagery perhaps meant to be something more than a kick in the crotch or Nelson Muntz (of The Simpsons) "ha-ha" at the audience. There are good, even great movies, that have bummer endings. But those enhance the story and how it affects the audience. They linger in the mind and spark thoughts and conversations and debates. This movie sparks nothing. It is not misogynist or anti-capitalist, or woke or anti-woke, or even cynical. It is nihilistic but it is like the nihilists in The Big Lebowski who are kind of annoying and then run away after a minor scuffle. I can't even be mad at this movie because it amounts to such a nothing. This might be the first time that my reaction to a movie was to think of a bible quote (appropriately enough from Revelation): “So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
Bugonia is available to stream on Peacock.
Nominees: Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Lars Knudsen, producers
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenplay: Will Tracy; based on the film Save the Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis
Production Companies: Element Pictures, Square Peg, CJ ENM, Pith, Fruit Tree Enterprises
Distributor: Focus Features
Release Date: October 24th, 2025
Total Nominations: 4, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Actress-Emma Stone; Adapted Screenplay-Will Tracy; Original Score-Jerskin Fendrix
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