Bugonia (Photo – Focus Features)
Part body horror, science fiction, and a fractured mirror reflecting our troubled times, Bugonia, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, is a big-screen, kick-in-the-pants kind of movie.
House of Bugonia
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
Starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, the film plays out like a chamber piece after Plemons’s character, the unstable Teddy, kidnaps Stone’s character, the “pure corporate evil” (his words), Michelle Fuller, with the reluctant help of Teddy’s cousin Donnie, played by newcomer Aidan Delois.
The reason for the kidnapping is best described as idiosyncratic.
After being subjected to a brutal ordeal—she’s shown in the opening minutes undergoing extensive martial arts training—Michelle is confined to a basement, where she and Teddy engage in a tense game of cat-and-mouse. The direction these exchanges take was not what I expected.
The cast is excellent. Of Emma Stone, I can only quote Celluloid Heroes by The Kinks: “If you cover him with garbage, George Sanders would still have style.” Well, Stone’s Michelle Fuller isn’t covered in garbage, but she is drenched in blood, some of it her own, shot with electricity, beaten, tackled, shorn, and chained. And yet, there’s that voice, those green eyes, and the way she’s photographed in corporate power attire at the start: from the bottom of the frame, she looks ten feet tall, every bit the star.
I first saw Jesse Plemons shooting a kid in cold blood on Breaking Bad, and with his recessed eyes and jutting chin, he retains that ruthlessness with a hint of madness. He’s like an auto wreck you can’t look away from. Aidan Delois, though his lines grow sparser as the movie progresses, does a remarkable job of acting with his eyes. They seem to know what his confused mind doesn’t.
There’s cruelty in Bugonia, to be sure, but it’s nothing like the impaling of a black cat I recall from Lanthimos’s otherwise-excellent Dogtooth. In fact, given the film’s underlying themes of allegiances, the shocking scenes are stomach-turning but motivated.
I liked Poor Things, Lanthimos’s last film, but Bugonia is even better.
> Playing at Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal Paseo, IPIC Theaters, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, Regal UA La Canada, AMC Laemmle Glendale, and LOOK Dine-In Cinemas Monrovia.
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