Reddit threads, conspiracies, rabbit holes and pies in skies. Maybe we did start the fire? Yorgos Lanthimos’s third film in as many years is his most propulsive and kinetic despite operating on the smallest scale of them all. Much like this year’s “Eddington” and “One Battle After Another,” Lanthimos and writer Will Tracy seem to be mobilized by the painful absurdity of existence under modernity. When all around you seems to falter, there must be an answer to all of the madness. Aliens are a pretty good one.
A remake of “Save the Green Planet!,” Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 dark comedy, “Bugonia” takes the same premise and transposes it onto America 20 years later. The intervening generation between films is a boon to Lanthimos and Tracy’s project as the snowballing history and breakthrough developments in internet-assisted psychotic paranoia amp up the premise to an 11 and then some. Tracy’s script is timely enough, but it’s Lanthimos’ signature off-kilter directorial style that pushes “Bugonia” past being a movie “of its time” and into a movie that knows exactly what it means to live in this time.
“Bugonia” follows Teddy and Don Gatz (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis), two cousins who plan to kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the high-profile CEO of Auxolith, a major pharmaceutical company that Teddy toils away for in a small town seemingly driven by the company’s profits and jobs. Why are they kidnapping her? Teddy believes her to be an alien.
Though its marketing gives away more of the plot than it needs to, “Bugonia” is an understandably hard sell. The premise is plucky enough, thanks to Jang Joon-hwan, and Tracy gleefully iterates upon it, but Lanthimos’s trademark mean streak permeates the very DNA of the picture to a degree that even Chappell Roan needle drops and the star power of Stone, seemingly Lanthimos’s muse, make hard to shroud.
Lanthimos’s preceding film, the anthology comedy “Kinds of Kindness,” was also contemporarily set, yet took place in the very alternate reality that his earlier films seemed to inhabit. “Bugonia” is a direct confrontation of life as it is today, albeit in extreme measures. Teddy stands on one end of a heightened class spectrum: dirt broke, stuck at a low-paying job, subservient to powers that be. Michelle is on the other: a high-ranking CEO who earns millions and graces magazine covers. The dichotomy is extreme, but Tracy’s screenplay matches the heightened dynamic which Lanthimos matches tenfold. When the two clash, it’s the meeting of minds with opposite experiences. An obdurately conspiracy-addled worker well below the poverty line versus a cold, unfeeling exec who lives between the lines of corporate jargon.
Don is stuck in the middle. Delbis, an autistic actor, brings so much warmth to this tragic figure who gets wrapped up in Teddy’s scheme out of unyielding loyalty to his cousin. His life has been more than sidetracked by Teddy’s plotting and the lengths they must go to in order to demonstrate fealty to their own cause, as dubbed by Teddy: the human resistance. Don is most emblematic of Lanthimos’s cruelty, and however one reacts to his role here may dictate how one reacts to the film at large, but Delbis stands on his own against Plemons and Stone, who both deliver powerhouse performances.
The two leads are consummate professionals, but I don’t know if either has had more fun on screen than here. Plemons’s wiry, grotesque resolve is as frightening as it is hilarious, especially as he bounces off his castmates with unpredictable high-strung energy. Stone is striking (the bald and silvery glow is one for the books) as a composed high-status figure fighting for her life against a force she can’t really comprehend. When the two butt heads, you can practically hear Lanthimos giggling with joy off-screen.
The duo in standoff mode comprises a majority of the film and it’s delectable. Robbie Ryan, Lanthimos’s frequent cinematographer, immaculately frames the film, especially in the confined spaces of the Gatz house. Teddy’s paranoia seeps its way into the floorboards, and Ryan maximizes the dilapidated house’s cramped spaces and cranks the anxiety of every confrontation within its walls. That tonally unsettling domination is frequently cut through by Tracy and Lanthimos’s bloody sense of humor, which Stone especially plays to.
Lanthimos’ atonal sensibilities perfectly fit the anxieties of modern life, and he’s seemingly more than tapped into the endless ticking clock of 2025. He’s game to exploit the reliance we have on tech, an easy target, but also extracts a dripping unease out of every corporate office and cold break room like an avant-garde Greek kid in a candy store of modern despair. Further proof of his finger on the pulse is the casting of former “Cum Town” host Stavros Halkias as Casey, a feckless cop and one of the only other players in this tight ensemble. Punctuating a scene every now and then, Halkias’ notoriously brazen vulgarity is nowhere to be seen, as he portrays a darkly comedic and horrible figure right out of a Tennessee Williams play. It’s no mistake that the southern playwright’s propensity for chamber dramas infects the bulk of the film’s goings-on, as funny as they are disturbing in their actions and implications alike.
Where “Bugonia” really hits its stride is in its slowly revealed sympathy. This is a cruel movie, make no mistake about it, but Lanthimos takes painstaking detail in exploring the normalcies of the Gatz household despite its macabre and demented goings-on. The decrepit shingling and messy interiors are no more alien than the average American household. Now, this could be the filmmaker poking at even more wounds, thumbing his nose at disgusting Americana, but it’s genuine backdropping against the insanity at play.
That insanity cranks into high gear as stakes rise and rise while Michelle and Teddy’s desperations grow. As these unstoppable forces and unmovable objects keep clashing, Lanthimos hits bullseyes using Tracy’s words to pinpoint the inanity of trying to convince those lost to their conspiracy-stoked rabbit holes today. Maybe the people who’ve fallen down are never getting out of wonderland. Or, even scarier, wonderland could very well be here and we just don’t know it yet. Lanthimos knows just as much as we do, but he’s still having the time of his life throwing curveballs at audiences and dragging us down the rabbit hole.
“Bugonia” opens in limited release on Oct. 24 and expands Oct. 31.
