Bugonia is one of those movies that sounds absolutely nuts when you try explaining it to someone but then you sit down and watch it and realize Yorgos Lanthimos really knows what the hell he is doing with this weird ass concept, so for a weird movie a weird blog post cover image. Turns out this is a remake of a 2003 South Korean movie called Save the Green Planet and you would think somebody like him would avoid remakes entirely but I found it very entertaining and even kinda hard to rate personally so I gave it a 7.5/10. Emma Stone plays Michelle Fuller, this CEO of a pharmaceutical company who gets kidnapped by Jesse Plemons character Teddy who thinks she is an alien from Andromeda trying to destroy humanity so he shaves her head to stop her from communicating with the mothership which is just hilariously crazy but somehow works, its just ridiculous, the whole movie is basically these two going back and forth in this basement testing each other and you cannot figure out if Teddy is completely insane or if there is actually something going on with Michelle being an alien the script keeps you guessing the entire time and I was sitting there thinking wait is this a thriller or a comedy or science fiction or what the fuck is this movie, the fact that they cut her hair was genius for the topic at hand to relate her more with a bald alien. I know Lanthimos did Poor Things which I loved and also Kinds of Kindness which I enjoy but wasnt a movie I would watch more than twice so I was not sure what to expect going in but damn this movie surprised me.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12300742/
- Platform: AppleTV+
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Emma Stone is doing double duty here because she is saying one thing but thinking another and you can see both sides of her mind going at once, there is this early scene where she is talking to her assistant about leaving work at 5:30 but also not really leaving at 5:30 if you got work to do and the way she handles that conversation shows you everything about her character without spelling it out. She comes off kind of smug and a kinda villain too right from the start which makes you think she is the bad guy here but then things get more complicated as the story goes on. Jesse Plemons might be giving his best performance ever and that is saying something because the dude has been great in everything he does, he keeps you wondering if Teddy is willing to torture someone because he is crazy or because he might actually be right about the whole alien invasion thing, turns out this guy works in a warehouse packing boxes for the same company Michelle runs and his mom signed up for some experimental opioid treatment that went wrong and now she is in a coma so you start thinking okay this man had a psychotic break from all the trauma and loss. The kidnapping scene itself is pretty funny because when you first meet Teddy and his cousin Don they do not look like they are in fighting shape at all, they seem kinda pathetic and weak but Michelle still puts up a good fight until they take her down with some drug, then they drag her back to their house along with her G Wagon and lock her in the basement where the real fun begins. Aidan Delbis plays Don and this is his debut role and the kid is really good in it, he comes across like just a little simple at first but you realize later he is actually pretty smart just very easily manipulated by his cousin who is the only person that means anything to him in the world, Teddy even convinces Don to undergo a chemical castration by taking some hormone injection because he thinks Michelle will try to seduce them and they need to protect themselves which is so messed up.
Teddy has this whole theory about Andromedons which is what he calls these aliens and he is so into it that he crafted a model of their spaceship on his own laptop, he knows their entire hierarchy and thinks that on the lunar eclipse in like four days Michelle is gonna try to communicate with the mothership so he shaves all her hair off because he believes hair is how they talk to each other which is absolutely insane, there is a lot into this movie that is a first time for me. The movie makes ordinary shit look important because if Teddy is right then world ending events are happening in this rundown house, they really committed to making everything feel claustrophobic and small. There is also this creepy sheriff character played by Stavros Halkias who shows up and you find out he used to babysit Teddy when he was a kid and the movie heavily implies he molested him, he keeps trying to apologize in this really awkward way saying stuff like can I come over sometime I am worried about you and the things that happened, it is more than implied it is pretty damn clear what went down and it adds this vibe of tragedy to the whole situation. The middle part where Michelle is trapped in the basement trying to convince Teddy to see things differently is where the movie really shines because you get these long conversations between them that feel like verbal combat, she tells him he is in an echo chamber and his reaction is like yeah I do not agree with that opinion at all but I mean to each their own then he proceeds to electrocute her which was probably the most uncomfortable scene in the entire thing, she is screaming and Don reacts in ways that make it even more intense because you can tell he does not want to be part of this but he goes along with it anyway.
Teddy freaks out when he realizes the electrocution readings are off the charts because he thinks oh shit she is not just a regular Andromedon she is like the queen so he apologizes profusely and unshackles her then takes her upstairs and puts her in a cute little outfit and chains her to the dining room table, the spaghetti dinner scene is really good because at first Michelle is trying to play it cool and diplomatic like she has been doing but then she mentions his mom and things get very heated to the point where they have to drag her back downstairs. The sheriff shows up at an inopportune moment giving you misery vibes and while Don is holding Michelle at gunpoint in the basement trying to keep her quiet the sheriff is upstairs talking to Teddy about this missing CEO, they share a slice of Pepperidge Farm cake from the freezer aisle and Teddy has the good sense to ask the sheriff if he wants to see his bees because Teddy is an amateur beekeeper which gives him an excuse to get outside, then everything goes to hell when Don shoots himself in the head after asking Michelle if she will take him away from here if she really is an alien which made me emotional since it look like Don could not handle being caught between two impossible realities and saw no future for himself if Teddy gets arrested, it is one of the most tragic moments in the movie because Don was the only innocent person trying to stay human throughout all the madness. Teddy hears the gunshot and runs back to find his cousin dead so he releases the bees on the sheriff then blast his head in with extreme violence. After all that craziness Michelle convinces Teddy she can save his mom if he goes to her car and gets this antidote from the trunk that is labeled antifreeze, she says it is just disguised so people do not know what it really is, its just one thing after another that makes the movie ridiculous and unbelievable but at the same time hilarious, the this dumb bastard actually believes her so he rides his bike down to the nursing home breaks into his room and injects antifreeze into her IV bag then watches his mother slowly die right in front of him which is not funny but it is so crazy you almost have to laugh at how far he fell for her manipulation, its just insane.
Meanwhile back at the house Michelle escapes and finds this secret room where Teddy has been experimenting on humans, he has got heads and body parts in jars and all this research about aliens so when he gets back she is waiting for his ass and she tells him I am an alien then goes into this long explanation about how humans came from Andromedons and they have been watching us destroy our planet so they sent some of their people down to try and help us do better, the whole thing is very like they have been studying the humans for decades and crazy as the movie doesnt wants you to believe her but be wary and suspicious like it really wants you to keep guessing wtf is going on without landing on any of the two sides of the truth. I really enjoyed this thing way more than I thought I would because Lanthimos knows how to balance dark comedy with tension and the performances from Stone and Plemons are incredible, they carry the entire movie on their backs and you believe every second of their weird ass dynamic even when the situation gets completely absurd. The movie does not give you easy answers about who is right or who is wrong or what is real and what is not, it just puts these two people in a room together and lets them tear each other apart psychologically while also making you laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing is, one person view towards nihilism or optimism might decide their takeaway and I think that is spot on because depending on how you see the world you will either think Michelle is a master manipulator or actually an alien trying to help humanity. The movie as a whole does a great job adapting the South Korean original into something that feels very much like a Lanthimos movie while still respecting or at least representing the source material, even though it has some logical holes and the ending might frustrate people who want everything explained it is still a wild ride that kept me guessing the whole way through and made me think about it for days after.
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