It seems like Lanthimos’ oblique style probably clashed with screenwriter Will Tracy’s tendency towards unsubtle, topical satire as seen in Succession and The Menu, and Bugonia landed somewhere between the two.

This isn’t a bad thing at all though, I think with Bugonia they mostly nail the characterization of an all-too-familiar figure in American life today: the hyper-alienated, terminally-online exurban male driven to violent action by circumstances hopelessly out of his control. Jesse Plemons is fantastic as Teddy and forces you to oscillate between empathizing with his situation and gawking at his inhumanity. I do think Lanthimos lays it on a bit thick with Teddy’s character at times; there’s no real reason he had to have been assaulted by his babysitter-turned-bumbling-cop as a child or for him to be a serial murderer for the audience to buy his motivation for the kidnapping and the conspiracy theory. The black and white sequences of him with his mother are gorgeously haunting and provide enough cover for his decision making in the film. 

Don’s character is another instance where the glee with which these two men seem to derive from kicking the shit out of their own characters begins to distract from the narrative. His grisly demise just feels like adding insult to injury because it’s already abundantly clear how much of a victim of Teddy’s mania he is. Up until that point, I thought the movie was doing an admirable job incorporating an autistic character that’s not simply comic relief or an object of pity. I suppose you can’t expect any given character in a Lanthimos movie to not end up with their brain splattered on the floor though, so I won’t be too critical about that choice.

Emma Stone is once again just a total revelation under Yorgos’ eye. Give her that third Oscar and she’ll deservedly start getting some GOAT talk. She’s hilarious and terrifying and her physical performance is incredible. Her depiction of self-rationalization as big pharma CEO Michelle Fuller is often convincing enough to make you take her side, despite understanding how depressed and isolated her actions have made Teddy and countless others. 

This makes it sort of hilarious for Teddy’s beliefs about her to be fully vindicated in the end, and demonstrates a considerably defter touch with the “lol guess we’re all just doomed” ending than schlocky Adam McKay garbage like Don’t Look Up and The Menu. Given that Teddy’s beliefs are totally unsubstantiated until he dies, I think it’s debatable that what we see actually occurred in the real world of the film.

If nothing else, this ending is worth it for the final montage, which is brilliant and could stand on its own as a short film. It’s a deeply cynical take on humanity, which is inherently a bit unsatisfying because it doesn’t move beyond the conclusions of much lesser works, but it approaches the zeitgeist with a greater curiosity regarding all the insanity rather than just “humans are so stupid am I right?”

Ari Aster being a producer on this gives me another reason to find 3 hours to watch Eddington, because these sorts of releases attempting to address the undeniable mass psychosis occurring since COVID are clearly the story of filmmaking this year and it’s interesting to see different directors take a crack at it.

Watched 11/7/2025