On the one hand, Bugonia is right up my alley. A genre-bending, tone-shifting “sci-fi black comedy” produced by Ari Aster and starring Landry from Friday Night Lights is basically a movie crafted using a Mad Libs written by my heart. And yet…
On the other hand, Bugonia is my personal hell. It is essentially two hours of torturing a woman and asking “what if the crazy conspiracy people were right,” with a final sequence that is so wildly upsetting, it feels like what I assume the phrase “Doctor Who has officially been canceled forever would feel like,” if that could ever happen (which it can’t).
Writer Will Tracy’s oeuvre includes Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Succession, and The Menu. He is clearly quite comfy using dark humor to condemn what we’ve done with American society and to planet Earth. Director Yorgos Lanthimos is, arguably, the current filmmaking king of saucy silly satire. They make sense together, even if Bugonia maybe fully doesn’t. Maybe.
The film is deliciously lean, if nothing else. Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap a biopharma CEO named Michelle (Emma Stone) because Teddy is convinced she’s an alien. An Andromedan, to be specific. He wants her to set up a negotiation with her royal intergalactic emperor in order to stop the extraterrestrials from continuing to push humanity toward extinction and, most importantly, to get them to stop murdering bees. She forcefully insists that she is, in fact, not an alien. Torture ensues.
There are really only two other significant characters in the whole movie. The tragedy of Teddy’s mom (Alicia Silverstone) is told in flashbacks and the tragedy of Teddy’s childhood, which involves the local sheriff, Casey (Stavros Halkias), is suggested a few times in upsettingly casual fashion. Both of those add ammunition to the “Teddy is fully bonkers” argument, while the entire premise of the film prevents fully dismissing Michelle’s potential outer space origins. Say this much for Bugonia: It does not ambiguously leave things up to the viewer to decide.
At least, it doesn’t leave the concrete plot elements up to the viewer. The actual point that the film is making, however, is a real bugbear. It certainly isn’t a boisterous defense of conspiracism, the inarguable scourge of modern society. At best, it is a sympathetic pitying of the conspiracy obsessed. And maybe that’s the right perspective. Maybe understanding and empathizing with those who see invisible red string everywhere is the key to finally unraveling those threads. But while we continue to collectively live in the ruinous fallout of the decisions those folks keep making, it is hard to fully embrace a movie that feels bad for them.
At least Bugonia doesn’t soft pedal their danger. The bulk of the film is highwire tension interrupted by comedic absurdism. And while Tracy, Lanthimos, and the performers shouldn’t be expected to float a solution to our collective conspiratorial mess, is this extensive lady torture that concludes in the bleakest-of-bleak outcomes more of a satisfying snapback or a satirical shoulder shrug?
I can’t think of a movie in recent memory that challenged me this much when trying to decide (A) whether I liked it or (B) whether it is objectively good. The latter is a bit easier, given that Plemmons is spectacular. His reward will probably be losing the Best Actor Oscar to Timothée Chalamet for his upcoming cursed ping-pong biopic. Stone is great, but everybody already knew that. And Lanthimos remains a singular and consistent voice that doesn’t get stuck singing the same chorus like other acclaimed auteurs do.
But did I like it?!
Do I think it made its point? Do I think it had a real point? Do I agree with the real point it may or may not have had? I don’t know. I may not ever know. And ultimately, I adore art that asks more of us, that confuses us, that makes us question its applicability to the world. But it can’t make my honor roll if it is 90% “a quasi-serial killer does bad stuff to a woman for a few hours.” Take notes, Ryan Murphy.
Grade = B+
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Amy Nicholson at the LA Times says “Bugonia is a hilarious movie with no hope for the future of humanity. What optimism there is lies only in the title, an ancient Greek word for the science of transforming dead cows into hives, of turning death into life.”
Liz Shannon Miller at Consequence says “the cat-and-mouse game between abductor and abductee ends up being the thrust of this movie, a three-hander which includes two actors who might be the most acclaimed of their generation. On one side of the table, you have Michelle, calmly trying to gain control over the situation she’s in while avowing her status as a human. On the other side, you have Teddy, convinced that she’s lying.”
Moira Macdonald at the Seattle Times says “But despite the fine performances and inventive camera work, Bugonia lost me, somewhere around where Michelle was being tied up and tortured. Perhaps I’ve just reached my lifetime limit of women-in-captivity movies; perhaps Lanthimos’ particular brand of dark comedy feels too close to the bone right now. The final moments of Bugonia paint as grim a picture of humanity as you’ll see anywhere; it’s superbly crafted, to be sure, but it’s ice-cold at its core.”