Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons reunite with frankly, indecent quality. An English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet! (2003), it’s easy to see why the trio found it a good fit. Aside from the societal and environmental relevance (more so than at the beginning of the century), it plays to their strengths, handing them a quick route to award-troubling glory. Thing is, it also has something of a flash-in-the-pan about it. 

Stone plays Michelle Fuller, the CEO of the pharma giant Auxolith, abducted by troubled conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Plemons) and his autistic cousin Don (a startling debut from an open call for Aidan Delbis). 

After Teddy’s mother was rendered comatose following an Auxolith clinical trial, long voice-overs (explainers to his cousin) help Teddy impart how he became aware of Andromedans, malignant aliens who are turning humans into bees, ready for extermination. Convinced that Michelle, a successful and efficient CEO, is one of them, Teddy and Don abduct her, shave her hair and compel her to negotiate a meeting with her people. 

The clock’s ticking, with Teddy convinced the meeting is only possible at the lunar eclipse four days after their abduction. As Teddy’s electrocution experiments convince him that Michelle is no less than Andromedan royalty, he and his cousin struggle to contend with the deadline and their captive’s constant negotiation and manipulation. But it’s a tragic twist that could be the catalyst for either Teddy to achieve his goal or Michelle to escape on the day of the eclipse. 

Bugonia is essentially a sparring two-hander between Stone and Plemons, last seen opposite each other in Lanthimos’s anthology Kinds of Kindness. Being a Lanthimos film, the audience needs to be ready for everything, and an open mind is certainly recommended to deal with the diversions, twists, and teases Lanthimos injects into proceedings. He is, after all, encouraging us throughout to side with either Big Pharma or criminal conspiracy. 

Perhaps it’s no surprise that where it gets really interesting is in its detours. Don is a necessary voice of conscience, but his solution to being left to guard Fuller in an incredible scene is the film’s true jaw-dropper and a gateway to a more active third act. The couple of times that Stavros Halkias’s deputy sheriff, Casey Boyd, appears—Teddy’s former apologetic babysitter—more than hints at the dark trauma behind Teddy’s actions.  

That texture is supplemented by dream-like monochromatic steps into Teddy’s mind, the first an extraordinary cameo for Alicia Silverstone as his mother. But the stodgy spine of it is the back-and-forth that encourages us to run with or reject certain facts. That’s difficult when Stone, shaved and smothered in antihistamine cream, looks so alien, and the camera—much of the basement scenes are feats of framing and chiaroscuro lighting—responds so well to Plemon’s long-haired, strained face. But Lanthimos’s visual flourishes can only contrort against the real truth. No matter who’s right, it’s a nihilistic spiral. Early on, Teddy answers his cousin’s concerns, reassuring him they won’t get caught. Because “No one on Earth gives a single fuck about us.”

Things perk up at the end, when Teddy and Michelle’s circling game ramps up, and she offers an alternative to her captor’s conspiracies that they leave the house.  There is a conclusion, one dripping in dark implications and darker comic coincidence, but the point really resolves in the prolonged montage at the end. A succession of images gives us plenty to mull, with Lanthimos taking his chance to make a wry statement on the threats to the planet, and that there isn’t anyone left untouched.

The odd feeling we’re left with is that Bugonia is a top-tier collaboration between the three, but that better and stronger is still to come.