You are a CEO with an iron will, the owner of Louboutins and a Mercedes Benz G-Class. You have the smooth face and athletic body of a woman ten years younger than your 45 years, thanks to the incredibly expensive anti-aging treatment you're taking.
Later, you have martial arts training where you regularly knock the pants off 30-pound men. During the day, you manage a large international company, Auxolith Corp, which employs a large portion of the surrounding city's residents – with only a few hushed up employee poisonings here and there.
You have a firm grip on negative press surrounding the chemicals you sell; chemicals that no reputable scientific journal has (unequivocally) linked to the collapse of bee colonies around the world.
“You have everything,” you think, driving along the long road to the huge house in which you live alone.
But if you really don't have anything to worry about, who are those two masked men running from behind your car, armed with a syringe and a bottle of… is that bug spray?
WATCH | Bugonia trailer:
This is how it begins Bugoniaa quirky conspiracy comedy from director Yorgos Lanthimos, remade from the South Korean Save the Green Planet! Although, to be fair, it all really begins a few days before, when in a lonely, abandoned family home with no family left, two masked men hatch a plot to kidnap CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone).
This plan is led by Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons), an amateur beekeeper, professional conspiracy theorist, and disgruntled employee of Fuller's company, who has quite a few skeletons in his closet.
But hanging alongside these skeletons is a clear, if radical, theory inspired by them: that Fuller is an alien overlord from the Andromeda Galaxy in disguise, sent to Earth to subjugate and control the human race.
According to Teddy, only he and his intimidated, easily manipulated neurodivergent cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) can stop her.
Sci-fi weirdness
No matter how violent this may sound, do not distort the essence: this is not Stranger Things. Despite the bracing mix of absurdist humor and unsettling, corny violence for which Lanthimos is famous, Don and Teddy's strategy works much better. Black snake moan how Black mirror.
The strategy is simple: chain Fuller in the basement, beat a confession out of her, and then somehow trade the trip to her mothership, which Teddy is sure will arrive during a lunar eclipse in a few days.
For the audience, the biggest obstacle to Bugonia There are hazy layers of social commentary, mysterious character backstories, and slapstick bits of barbed humor all butting up against each other.
Didn't spend much time on QAnon message boards or watch the techno-feudalist documentary. Hypernormalization? Good luck understanding Teddy's worldview: humanity is a “dead colony, fragmented into trillions of directions” deluded by a “global democratic order” that controls society through a “hyper-normalized dialectic.”
Not a fan of confusing, low-concept arthouse films? The dreamlike monochrome visual excursions into Teddy's past may be too much for you. For example, when you see him pulling his dying mother Sandy (Alicia Silverstone) through the air by a rope like a runaway balloon, you may be left scratching your head. Because, wait, how much of what happened is Lanthimos talking about?
And perhaps most importantly: what the hell is Bugonia?
As confusing as it may seem, half the fun of Lanthimos is figuring out exactly what he's trying to say. Here, as in his past films, it is simple human error taken to its logical extreme by comically absurd circumstances.
Where in Types of Kindness it was how and why devotion and love become property, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer explored the terrifying realities of true justice and objective morality, Bugonia turns his lens from introspection to a kind of wide-eyed extraspection.
You see it in Michelle when she talks about how Auxolith will no longer overwork its employees: everyone can go home at 5:30. That is, provided they don't have any work to finish. Or that they are keeping up with quotas. After all, this is a business. But also family. Use your best judgment!
What's obvious about Teddy is the fact that he's so concerned with saving the world—or, more likely, getting revenge on the corporatism that stole his family from him—that he's willing to exploit and destroy his loving, trusting cousin to get his hands on him.
Early on, he forces Don to not only participate in a life-destroying federal crime, but also to submit himself to chemical castration in order to resist any sexual wiles from the alien they are about to abduct. This is an act that he carefully forces Don to do, suppressing his half-whispered protest that he still wants to have a family someday.
You see this reflected in another character, bumbling local cop and Teddy's old babysitter Casey (Stavros Chalkias). Casey, seemingly troubled by the tether to reality for a young man slipping into psychosis, frequently tries to check on Teddy. He just does it while occasionally making cheerful apologies for things he did when they were younger – clearly implying that he abused Teddy as a child.
And yes, it's even in the title: a reference to the ancient Greek belief that bees spontaneously formed from the rotting carcasses of an ox.
Although screenwriter Will Tracy said the title was chosen largely for its absurd, insect-like imagery, it's hard to avoid more specific connections: while we want to believe that something good, beautiful and orderly can emerge from the depths of something dirty, polluted and diseased, it's more of a fairy tale. Good luck everyone!
For Lanthimos fans, this is all heady enough to satisfy. This is despite a plot that never seems to fully flesh out: Stone and Plemons play out their cat-and-mouse game brilliantly, but – given all the other balls Lanthimos is juggling – it feels like it's all over too soon. This is despite a bizarre ending that is likely to elicit chuckles and groans in equal measure.
This is despite a tinge of humor that, while appealing to some voters, may get a little lost in the weeds for others. This humor was also present in Lanthimos' royal comedy. Favoritewhich, although set in the 18th century, includes a dance scene with fashion, breakdancing and spanking.
One reviewer watched the scene stony-faced and confused, not realizing it was supposed to be funny until a full 24 hours later.
With that in mind, you can guess the number of laugh out loud moments. Bugonia inspired. I'll be waiting!
