‘Bugonia’: A Pitch-Black Comedy About Alienation

Darkly funny and regularly disturbing, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia asks the question: are we ready for the consequences of derealisation that arises in the online world? A remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, Lanthimos’ take on the material is substantially more interested in how people grow so detached from reality that they view people who’ve done wrong by them as literal aliens.

Teddy (Jesse Plemons) knows something that nobody else does: Michelle Fuller, (Emma Stone) the CEO of the shady pharmaceutical company he works for, is actually an alien from the Andromeda galaxy that’s destroying bee populations and attempting to exact the same methods of erasure onto humanity.

Roping in his dependant neurodivergent cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) into his schemes, the two kidnap Michelle on a mission to save Earth. But between her maliciously compliant corporate speech and trauma from Teddy’s past bubbling over, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where the truth actually lies.

Compared to the melodramatic, often zany tone of Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia is often oppressively bleak even while being funny. Although it’s actually a pretty straightforward remake, it cuts the fat of the original and shifts the story to a modern setting where internet conspiracy theorists are part and parcel of daily life. Will Tracy’s script has a particularly strong understanding of how the modern world works, making Bugonia’s commentary that much more cutting.

What I found especially interesting about this film as a remake is how it accentuates themes that only bubbled under the surface of the original. There’s a clear current of class commentary running through the film, evident in the opening act as Lanthimos’ directing – which is stellar as usual – draws clear comparisons between Teddy and Don’s rustic, cramped estate and Michelle’s absurdly big, depressingly modernist mansion.

Indeed, Bugonia seems to be suggesting that the upper class live lives so different to the rest of us that they may as well be aliens. Emma Stone’s performance as Michelle is brilliantly committed (reflected in her shaved head), perfectly delivering the kind of corporate jargon that makes her feel totally disconnected from the lives of her employees. The way she speaks is so unnatural, yet terrifyingly similar to how CEOs speak in real life.

Bugonia asks: are we ready for the consequences of internet alienation?

It’s especially potent given the fact that Teddy’s mother is currently hospitalised, due to corporate negligence by Auxolith. He admits that he’s been a part of every movement and online bubble before finally settling on his particularly unusual worldview that has deduced Michelle is an Andromedan, after years of “independent research”.

Plemons is exceptional as the terrifyingly detached Teddy, who’s gone so deep down the rabbit hole that you never really know what he’ll say next. Watching him on-screen feels exactly like talking with a deranged conspiracy theorist, where the next words out of their mouth can never be remotely predicted.

Aidan Delbis is similarly great as Don, who relies on Teddy while clearly being exploited by him. He’s the most tragic character in Bugonia, and shows how the effects of derealisation and diving down internet rabbit holes affect more than just the individual person.

Though its leaner, more thematically focused story makes it a more consistent outing than its source material, Bugonia does also inherit some of its flaws. I’m particularly referring to the ending, which is almost exactly the same as Save the Green Planet! – though it is executed substantially better. I’m undecided on whether it’s antithetical to the film’s other themes (at least, the ones I’m interested in), even if it’s supremely effective in its sincerely haunting delivery.

Nonetheless, Bugonia is a terrific pitch-black comedy that serves as a meditation on the consequences of internet culture bleeding into real life. It’s difficult to feel hopeful walking out of the theatre, as with many Yorgos Lanthimos films… but it certainly leaves you with plenty to think about.

★★★★

Bugonia is in theatres now.