Have you ever watched E.T. and thought that what the movie really needs is conspiracy, murder, suicide, mutilation, a prolonged torture scene, and a score more reminiscent of Schoenberg than the wistful tunes of John Williams? If so, you are in luck because Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest, Bugonia, is exactly that. Written by Will Tracy, it is an adaptation of the Korean movie Save the Green Planet!, and marks Lanthimos’ fourth collaboration with Emma Stone and second with Jesse Plemons. The plot of this October release is naturally deranged, a trademark of Lanthimos’ filmography. Teddy (Plemons) and his intellectually disabled cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis) kidnap Michelle (Stone), the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, convinced that she is an alien, and that they have three days before the lunar eclipse to get her species to leave Earth alone. Most of the film takes place inside a basement and focuses on the battle of wills between Teddy and Michelle.
Teddy is a beekeeper and a conspiracy theorist, not politically affiliated, having been previously both on the far right and the far left. His internet research leads him to discover that the world is controlled by aliens (“Andromedans”) in high places who are intent on destroying humanity, a plan made apparent to Teddy in the dying of bees. He believes that one such Andromedan is Michelle, the ruthless CEO of a pharmaceutical company, trained in corporate-speak and business practices. At the start of the movie, she is seen telling her employees that after a recent suit, they are all free to leave work at 5:30, but heavily emphasising that only if their conscience allows them to. Teddy and Donny kidnap Michelle and take her to their basement, shave her hair so she is not able to contact her mothership, and apply a lotion to her skin. We later find out that her company was responsible for ruining the health of Teddy’s mother by testing dangerous new opioids on her. Deny it as he might, this is personal for him.
The performances of Stone and Plemons carry the entire film. The cold, calculating rationalism of Michelle is in direct contrast with the dishevelled confusion and amateurism of Teddy. We witness a brilliant defamiliarisation of corporate talk in an interrogation scene, when Michelle keeps her PR trained façade while being threatened with a gun, which makes it only slightly more absurd than it is in its natural habitat. Music – from Jerskin Fendrix’s original soundtrack to the carefully chosen pop songs – helps create a claustrophobic atmosphere, often clashing with the bleak scenes it accompanies. Bugonia has the dubious distinction of being the first but certainly not the last movie to feature a Chappell Roan song. And good luck listening to ‘Basket Case’ again after it has been used as a soundtrack to torture.
When all the elements of Bugonia work together, it makes for a very powerful and unsettling movie. Unfortunately, it all comes apart at the end. Since it is a remake, Lanthimos’ hands are tied to the plot twist, which is a shame because it is a terrible plot twist. Approximately 15 minutes before the end, the tone shifts from what was essentially a suspenseful thriller with black comedic moments to an absurdist comedy with no clear target. There is an inherent cynicism in the ending, when someone as clinically insane as Teddy, capable of repeated murder, torture, as well as feeding his own mother anti-freeze, turns out to be the voice of reason. What could have been a movie about conspiracy theorists and corporate leaders hiding behind meaningless language as they destroy the world, simply turns into a farce. Lanthimos is angry at the world, but at no particular aspect of it, and so he joins the line of essentially misanthropic directors like Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier. Whatever Bugonia has to say about particular aspects of society is incidental, what matters is that all of humanity and civilisation deserve to be destroyed, as a montage in the final moments shows people from all over the world stopped dead in their tracks. No religious, racial, or class differences, just superfluent mammals fit for elimination. It is unclear which side Lanthimos is taking in the battle between Teddy and Michelle: the insane conspiracy theorist who at least seems to care for the world or the calculating CEO who knows all about echo chambers but is unconcerned. What is clear is that the CEOs and the people who wish to eliminate them are all just a symptom of a disease called humanity. The only side to take is the side of the bees.
