Yorgos Lanthimos (Kinds of Kindness, Poor Things) returns with Bugonia, a slow-burning fusion of dark comedy, sci-fi paranoia, and moral unease. Once more, the acclaimed director has recruited his A-Team of actors, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, joined by newcomer Aidan Delbis, to help hone his craft in a story that feels both eerily familiar and deeply unsettling —a surreal look at a world that has become addicted to fear, suspicion, and half-truths.

The film follows Teddy (Plemons) and his cousin Don (Delbis), two seemingly humble beekeepers convinced that powerful pharmaceutical executive Michelle Fuller (Stone) is not human. Obsessed with online conspiracies, podcasts, textbooks, and any other form of media that will help influence their viewpoint, the duo kidnap Michelle, believing it is their divine duty to save humanity from what they perceive as an alien threat. As the days pass, certainty decays into confusion, and the film slowly asks whether Michelle’s otherworldliness is real or merely a reflection of her captors’ delusion.

Lanthimos stages the story like a clinical experiment in belief. The film constantly teeters, like a ship in a rough sea, between dark humour and unapologetic dread, with every line of dialogue sitting between a joke and a warning, and it’s up to the viewer to decide which is which.

The only factor that negatively affects the film is that some pacing moments tend to drag on. Whether this was an intentional story beat or an editing oversight remains to be seen. Plus, the film’s ultimate reveal and ending take a tonal shift into the downright bizarre and comical. For a movie built entirely around realism, scepticism and dread, the ending felt misplaced or creatively rushed.

As previously mentioned, Lanthimos has recruited Emma Stone, who has acted in the director’s last two motion pictures, and you can tell from her incredible and captivating performance that Lanthimos and Stone are a powerhouse duo, helping to understand what is needed to make this story just that little bit more engaging to the audience. Jesse Plemons is just as engaging, having teamed up with Lanthimos and Stone in Kinds of Kindness, brings his trademark quiet mania, with each line of dialogue reacting, shifting, twirling and executing the story beats perfectly.

Aidan Delbis levels out the intensity by bringing a soft, yet challenged character to the screen who seems to be struggling with their place in the world, whilst trying to support their cousin’s suspicions. The trio are constantly switching beliefs and strengths for doubt and weakness. In some Greek historian-inspired way, the trio are almost a reflection of The Fates, with each at times in control —or lacking thereof —of destiny.

Visually, Bugonia is what we have come to expect and now, as such, would refer to as ‘pure Lanthimos’. The direction and decision to maintain silence between exchanges of words on screen becomes their own form of pressure.

Lanthimos doesn’t just direct the story; he dissects it, turning each frame into a slow, deliberate incision that makes viewers wince at the unknown or suffer the consequences of the truth.

Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who also worked with Lanthimos on Kinds of Kindness and Poor Things, frames every shot with unsettling symmetry, making each look more like an incredible moving painting than just another motion picture. The lighting bleaches the warmth from every scene, yet alternatively, darkens the gloom and unsettling scenes, forever keeping the characters in a kind of emotional quarantine.

At its core, Bugonia is about faith gone feral, how a self-proclaimed healthy belief can quickly become its own virus. The opening shot, monologue, constant references to dying bumblebees, the eerie and sterile shots of empty countryside, and the lingering sound of an extraterrestrial buzzing all serve as metaphors for a civilisation that has begun to cave in on itself. It’s not just a film about conspiracy; it’s about the human need to believe in something, even if that belief consumes us.

Bugonia is haunting, hypnotic, and deeply uncomfortable. Lanthimos is at his most precise and pitiless. Not every beat lands, and its ambiguity will alienate some viewers, but that’s part of its design. It doesn’t seek catharsis or clarity; it lingers like a fever dream that you can’t quite shake or wake up from.

Written by: James Fraser-Smith