Photo courtesy Focus Features

As a film critic, I’ve had such a mixed relationship with Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos since he first came onto the scene. Dogtooth probably was the first movie of his I ever saw, and I never really got its appeal as others have, and the same goes for his later English-language movies, such as The Lobster and Killing of a Sacred Deer. In recent years, he’s made an interesting transition from quirky international auteur to bonafide Oscar regular with his 2018 film The Favourite (ironically still my favorite movie he’s made). It’s also led to his long collaboration with Emma Stone, who won her second Oscar for Lanthimos’ Poor Things just three short years ago. Lanthimos seems to have found a happy place between the divergent paths his career has taken, while making films like last year’s triptych, Kinds of Kindness, which really was not my thing.

Lanthimos’ latest, Bugonia, reteams him with Stone for a fourth time, as well as reuniting with Jesse Plemons, part of last year’s triptych, and it’s also the filmmaker’s third movie in three years. Based only somewhat faithfully on Jang Joon-hwan’s Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet! from 2003 (which I actually reviewed twenty years ago for ComingSoon.net), it’s been adapted by Will Tracy (The Menu, “Succession”), with a premise that falls into similar “eat the rich” territory as his other work.

Photo courtesy Focus Features

We meet Jesse Plemons’ Teddy as he’s tending bees with his young and impressionable cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis). Teddy is a conspiracy theorist who has created all sorts of rules and guidelines for his cousin, which range from odd and mundane to absolutely ludicrous. They range from biking everywhere, not using “screens,” to even more drastic demands. Indeed, Teddy has very set ideas about the world and how to improve it, just like everyone else on this planet. Simultaneously, we meet Emma Stone’s Michelle Fuller, the rich, high-powered CEO of a mega-billion biochemical company, who we watch doing a more traditional workout, just as Teddy puts Donny through his paces. Soon, the three come together as Teddy and Donny kidnap Michelle and accuse of being an alien transplant from Andromeda. Michelle’s head is shaved, and she is locked up in their basement, being constantly grilled and even tortured to admit her true extraterrestrial origins. Teddy demands to be taken to her “mothership,” in order to talk directly to the Andromedan Emperor about their plans for Earth.

All things considered, it’s a relatively simple story, and Bugonia is mostly about the interaction between these three disparate characters that mostly works due to Lanthimos’ fantastic cast. That includes Delbis, who I had no previous knowledge of, but who plays Donny in a way that makes you wonder if he’s neurodivergent or just a shy and impressionable young man. Stone continues to clearly be at the top of her game as an actor willing to go to great lengths for the characters she inhabits. I also greatly preferred Jesse Plemons’ conspiracy theorist in this movie over Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. The two movies do have some of the same DNA, in terms of their political commentary, even if the central stories are so different. At times, Lanthimos’ film bears comparison to films, such as Misery, 8 Cloverfield Lane, and even the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, three very different movies involving kidnappings.

Photo courtesy Focus Features

Otherwise, there are a scant number of subsidiary characters. One actor I did enjoy seeing in a small role is Stavros Halkias (from Let’s Start a Cult) as officer Casey from the county sheriff’s office, who has a past with Teddy. There’s also the nearly unrecognizable Alicia Silverstone as Teddy’s comatose mother, two pieces of the puzzle that is Teddy’s past to help explain why he’s so driven to uncover this “Andromedan plot.” At first, things unfold and reveal themselves quite slowly, but the film then builds towards the film’s final act, which goes to even more unexpected and insane places.

Lanthimos works with much of the same crafts team he’s used on his past few films. This includes DP Robbie Ryan, who does so much with lighting in the limited settings that adds so much to the performance-driven scenes, particularly Stone sans her trademark long hair. Jerskin Fendrix’s score is up there with one of the best of the year, just a really fantastic piece of film music that mixes the quirkiness from Poor Things with something more bombastic more apt for a much bigger movie. (The movie even uses the Green Day classic “Basket Case” in a similarly hilarious way as how Huey Lewis and the News was used in American Psycho.) Editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis is once again put through his paces, but in this case, he uses those skills to keep Bugonia moving briskly despite being so much about its dialogue.

As dark and hard-to-watch as things sometimes get, Bugonia is still very much a comedy, with Lantimos blending complex political humor into a fairly simple kidnapping plot. And yet, it has such a clear message that it also makes Bugonia one of the filmmaker’s most focused and concise films to date. Sure, it might not be for everyone, but it’s still a masterpiece that most weirdos (like myself) should truly adore.

Rating: 8/10

Bugonia opens in select cities on Friday, October 24, then goes nationwide on October 31.