Bugonia- 61st Chicago International Film Festival
October 22nd, 2025
MOVIE: BUGONIA
STARRING: JESSE PLEMONS, EMMA STONE, AIDAN DELBIS
DIRECTED BY: YORGOS LANTHIMOS
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 4 STARS (Out of 4)
RATED: R
RUN TIME: 120 MINUTES
Conspiracy theories used to be just that: theories. As a teenager, I was fascinated by the JFK assassination, especially after watching Oliver Stone’s film about it. It was easy to get wrapped up in the mystery and speculation surrounding that horrific moment in American history. But today, everything seems to be a conspiracy. What’s worse is that people now act on these delusions, inflamed by an era where nothing feels true, everything feels false, and everyone lives in their own reality. That unsettling mindset is the starting point for Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia. It is a film that captures our fractured times and the lost souls willing to go to extremes for their beliefs. Bugonia is provocative, disturbing, and utterly captivating- whether you want to believe it or not.
The story starts fast and never lets up. We first meet Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of a major medical company. She’s what the right might call a “girl boss”: she eats healthy, trains with a kickboxing coach, follows an immaculate skincare routine, wears expensive clothes, and drives a Mercedes G-Wagon. She’s even on the cover of TIME magazine. When she walks into the office, all eyes are on her.
Enter Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis). Teddy, the more dominant of the two, rides his bike to work at a packing plant, while Don- clearly somewhere on the spectrum- looks up to his cousin. Teddy has become convinced that Michelle Fuller is not human at all, but an alien masquerading as one. As his paranoia deepens, he concocts a plan to kidnap her, believing he’s saving humanity from an extraterrestrial overlord.
The screenplay, by Will Tracy and Jang Joon-hwan, is packed with rich character detail, while Lanthimos’s direction is masterful in tone and atmosphere. The men’s home is a bleak, decaying space. A relic of a life that’s long since gone. Dirty dishes, cluttered counters, and remnants of a mother’s illness all hint at past trauma. If the walls could talk, they’d probably need therapy. Through fast-moving camera work, tight close-ups, and a relentless sense of tension, Lanthimos crafts an atmosphere of paranoia. Similar to earlier films, such as The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Dogtooth, he clearly delights in doing so.
As the days of captivity unfold, the characters’ dynamics shift and unravel. The psychological games intensify. Stone, with her head shaved, radiates calm control —a woman constantly managing her terror while trying not to provoke her captors. Plemons and Delbis deliver haunting performances that blend sadness, desperation, and madness. Their intensity is so palpable that it’s emotionally exhausting to watch- in all of the best ways.
By the end, Bugonia poses questions that linger: What is real? What isn’t? Has humanity failed as an experiment? Have we abandoned empathy so completely that we’ve doomed ourselves? Lanthimos doesn’t offer comfort or validation for conspiracy theorists. He doesn’t let them off the hook; instead, he gives them exactly what they’ve asked for, with consequences they fully deserve.
Bugonia is a twisted, unsettling masterpiece- and I mean that as the highest of praise.
4 STARS
BUGONIA IS PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24TH, 2025.
Written by: Leo Brady
