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text by Alper Kurtul
Fresh off his Golden Lion win in Venice with Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos returns to the Lido two years later with Bugonia, a film that brings his unmistakable dark wit to a story shaped by escalating suspense and keeps its audience on edge for two relentless hours. The project follows Kinds of Kindness, a triptych released last year that recalled the scrappy inventiveness of his early low-budget films and featured Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons in three sharply drawn roles. The pair now leads Bugonia, turning their on-screen chemistry into yet another chapter of their ongoing collaboration with Lanthimos. Stone and the director first teamed up on The Favourite, and Bugonia marks their fifth project together. The partnership has already earned her two Oscar nominations and the Poor Things win, along with a long list of other awards. Yet, the fact that Lanthimos has not made a major English-language film without her in the last five years creates an odd feeling of dependence for both artists. A similar tension surrounds Plemons. After winning Best Actor at Cannes for his work in Kinds of Kindness, he returns in a role that, on paper, looked uncannily like a continuation of that film’s universe. When Bugonia was first announced, many wondered whether the project risked becoming an unofficial fourth chapter for both actors and whether they might be repeating themselves.
Despite all of these early concerns, both Stone and Plemons rise to the challenge with remarkable command. Their performances demand intense physicality and emotional whiplash, and they navigate these extremes with precision. Bugonia also marks a shift behind the camera. For the first time in years, Lanthimos steps away from his usual writing partners. The screenplay is not penned by Tony McNamara, who crafted the acidic dialogue of The Favourite and Poor Things, nor by Efthimis Filippou, who shaped the bone-dry strangeness of Dogtooth, The Lobster, and Kinds of Kindness. Instead, the script belongs to Will Tracy, who collaborates with Lanthimos for the first time after his work on Succession and The Menu. What distinguishes Bugonia most clearly from the rest of the director’s filmography is the fact that it is his first remake.
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features
Bugonia is a strikingly faithful reimagining of the 2003 South Korean dark comedy Save the Green Planet. Tracy adapts the original work of Jang Joon-hwan into a suburban American hostage thriller without losing the unhinged spirit of the source. The story follows Teddy, played by Plemons, a man whose mental stability is tenuous at best. Together with his cousin Don, played by Aidan Delbis, he kidnaps Michelle, the CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Auxolith, played by Stone. Teddy blames the company for the illness of his comatose mother, portrayed by Alicia Silverstone, and becomes convinced that Michelle is secretly an extraterrestrial. The film unfolds around his desperate attempt to force a confession. It opens with a wildly funny abduction sequence that leans fully into physical comedy before dropping into a far darker register once the interrogation begins. The tonal shift is sharp but purposeful, and the film settles into an atmosphere reminiscent of the alien paranoia cinema of the 1970s, blending absurdity with the rhythms of a police procedural.
Bugonia arrives in a year when the horror and thriller genres have surged with films like Sinners, Weapons, and Together signaling a cinematic landscape hungry for provocation. Lanthimos’s film fits neatly into this environment, although it remains uncertain whether it will satisfy fans who have come to expect the feverish surrealism of his past work. Visually, the director leaves behind his signature fisheye lenses and stylized framing in favor of a more conventional aesthetic. The choice feels linked to the nature of the remake and to his decision to keep the structure of the original largely intact, aside from transforming the genders of two central characters. This fidelity pulls Bugonia slightly away from the flamboyant extremity associated with his name. Yet the presence of his long-standing collaborators preserves the film’s authorship. Jerskin Fendrix, whose music for Poor Things earned an Oscar nomination, returns with a score that hums with unease. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography mirrors the story’s jittery energy, and Yorgos Mavropsaridis, who has edited nearly all of Lanthimos’s major works, brings his familiar rhythmic discipline to the project.
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Following the success of The Substance, it has become clear that festival circuits are increasingly drawn to films that flirt with body horror and other boundary-stretching genres. Audiences, too, seem eager for bold cinematic experiences. In this climate, it is no surprise that Lanthimos would take on a project with significant commercial potential while still indulging his taste for tonal risk. Bugonia ultimately delivers an entertaining experience. Its clever structural feints and its somewhat anthological-feeling finale offer unexpected pleasures without alienating viewers. Even so, the film carries a faint sense of déjà vu. After a decade of English-language work that expanded his international reach, Lanthimos seems to be arriving at a crossroads. Bugonia is engaging, inventive, and unmistakably his, yet it subtly hints at the possibility that he has started circling familiar terrain. It remains a film that few will resent, but it also invites questions about where the director will go next.