Bugonia (Theaters)

Entertaining, but thin, Bugonia thrills even if it doesn't hit the heights of other 2025 films commenting on the present

What is it? Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

Watch if you like: Kinds of Kindness, The Menu, The Lobster, Ex Machina

Schmear’s Verdict: Bugonia is an engrossing but exhausting mind game—well acted and conceptually clever, yet too deliberate and thin to match the fire or conviction of similar 2025 films.

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I wish—just ever so slightly more—that Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia kept us on its knife’s edge it dances on for much of its plot. This is a chamber piece, a battle of wits (or lack thereof) between Jesse Plemons’ character Teddy and Emma Stone as tech CEO Michelle. The film has modern undertones, speaking to the present capitalist condition, but it’s really more about how people rattle each other’s cages.

It’s hard not to appreciate Plemons and Stone absolutely going for it and putting everything into such despicable types. It was also enjoyable having a pure plot with a meaning and message as opposed to the surrealist brain vomit of Kinds of Kindness.

Bugonia is overlong and taxing, unraveling its layers deliberately. It’s a war of attrition being waged on the viewer, our patience being tested just as the characters are in the film.

There’s some sense of indignation, but it feels trite and played for laughs, situating it akin to yet separate from the purer “mad as hell” streaks of similarly minded films from this year, including It Was Just an Accident, No Other Choice, and One Battle After Another.

Examination reveals a story that is threadbare where those others are rich. The dreamy Alicia Silverstone flourishes failed to register. Much more affecting and grounding was the work from Aidan Delbis, who plays Don, the cousin of Plemons’ character. Don’s clear-eyed perceptiveness, even with and perhaps because of his intellectual disability, makes him stand out against the solipsism of our leads.

The reveal is a swing and a miss; the air of unknowing is preferable—it would’ve been bolder and braver to leave us in the feeling of dark self-doubt and moral ambiguity like the aforementioned films do.

That being said, the final images were striking and beautiful in an apocalyptic fairy-tale kind of way. It brought Bugonia full circle, contextualizing the transience of our existence as we squabble to no end.

While imaginative and effective, many other movies this year are aiming and firing at the present with more accuracy and force. Bugonia is a leaner exercise, lacking a certain involving quality but still wholly amusing.