Corporate greed, environmental degradation, alien intervention—in Bugonia, director Yorgos Lanthimos asks whether humanity deserves to survive, or if the planet is better off without us.

The trailer made me do it—convinced me to buy in, before I understood Bugonia’s awful truth. It’s a good trailer: two men, living outside the mainstream, kidnap a powerful Big Pharma CEO, convinced that she’s an undercover alien with humanity’s demise on her mind. As per its trailer, Bugonia kicks off as a sharp, darkly fun thriller about how far conspiracy theories can go.

And let’s face it—in a world riven by conspiracy theories, where real news is called out as fake news and wild fantasies are flagged as true facts, the only winners are the lizard people. Or in this case, aliens from Andromeda.

Emma Stone is Michelle Fuller, CEO of pharma-monster Auxolith. She’s a woman of power and influence, but when she’s kidnapped—clumsily—by Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), she finds herself alone and helpless in their basement world. It’s her wits and cunning against Teddy’s version of the truth.

Forget that Teddy’s mother lies in a coma, the result of an Auxolith clinical trial gone wrong—it’s not about revenge if all humanity’s at stake. Shaving Fuller’s head and slathering her body with antihistamine cream to keep her from contacting other Andromedans (obviously), Teddy demands that she gains him entry to the mothership so that he can parlay with the Andromedan emperor. Fuller, understanding that she’s trapped in a basement with men who can’t be convinced otherwise, does what she must to survive: she confesses.

Sure, okay, I’m an Andromedan.

Fuller must outwit, outplay, outlast—just like a hard-nosed businesswoman determined to survive. Or a clever Andromedan. Take your pick.

Stone, Plemons and Delbis must’ve had a fun, intense time making this film. Just like the best conspiracy theories, their performances are compelling. Paranoia is palpable, desperation drips in the air of the Gatz underworld. Will Michelle Fuller talk her way out of this unhinged kidnapping?

Delbis, as autistic cousin Don, plays a more ‘observant’ role. As time goes on, Don becomes increasingly uncomfortable with Teddy’s ongoing interrogation and needs to be pulled back inside Teddy’s truth. Don’s faith in Teddy may be more a matter of love and loyalty—he wants to believe because he has no one else.

Conspiracy theories can take all sorts of directions, and one reason they endure is that, while they’re mostly left unproven, they can’t necessarily be disproven either. Common sense isn’t acceptable evidence when you really want to believe.

So it is with Teddy Gatz. He’s carefully gathered his own evidence (some of it preserved in jars, to Fuller’s horror) and he won’t be dissuaded. As far as he’s concerned, the aliens are real. Don may not be so convinced, but he’d still like to make it to the mothership if only to escape the disappointments of Earth.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, Poor Things) and writer Will Tracy (Succession, The Menu) keep the craziness moving and the tension high. I wasn’t entirely convinced by a subplot involving police officer Casey Boyd (Stavros Halkias) wanting to make amends for past sins against Teddy, though I guess it adds to Teddy’s bucket of trauma and helps explain his incel-like withdrawal from the world.

Much like The Menu, Bugonia begins as one thing and slowly, sometimes spectacularly, becomes something else. It’s a genre mash-up—thrilling, funny, horrifying and apocalyptic—and it works best if you experience it with popcorn and a dark sense of humour.

Bugonia is a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 film Save the Green Planet! Jang’s film was partly inspired by a website claiming that Leonardo DiCaprio was an alien whose goal was to conquer Earth by seducing every woman on the planet. Sounds reasonable to me. I mean, prove that it isn’t true.

Bees feature in both films. Bugonia begins and ends with bees, true survivors keeping the world alive against serious, human-induced odds. The film’s title refers to an ancient Mediterranean ritual, based on a belief that the carcasses of sacrificed oxen could spontaneously generate bees, which in turn would repopulate hives.

Bugonia’s closing montage, unsettling and poetic, gives air to this notion of life arising from death and corruption. It’s a downbeat denouement to a manic climax where Teddy’s beliefs are tested and pushed to extremes. Those genres—thriller, black comedy, horror, sci-fi—really do mash together in the end, and the end is vivid, bloody and weird.

And I’m quietly convinced that it’s all utterly true.


IMAGE: Universal Pictures Australia