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Yorgos Lanthimos has quietly become one of my favorite working directors today. His unmistakable style runs through every frame of his films, something that, depending on who you ask, can be either his greatest virtue or his biggest fault. On the surface, Lanthimos’ films can come off as disturbing and transgressive, but beneath that unease lie deeper themes of human connection and the systems that shape it. While I can certainly see how his method of storytelling might not be for everyone, there’s something about the absurdity of his worlds, characters, and the methods behind them that draws me in.
My introduction to Yorgos Lanthimos was The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a film that immediately caught me off guard with its strange and deliberate feel. The monotone dialogue and dry, deadpan humor (staples of his early work) created an atmosphere that was both darkly funny and deeply unsettling. The Favourite and Poor Things would only go on to cement my love for his filmmaking, both carrying the same sense of unease but filtered through very different worlds. Poor Things, in particular, stands out to me, not just for its exploration of identity, but also for the fact that it was the first movie I had ever seen in which multiple people walked out mid-viewing due to discomfort. These films all display Lanthimos’ gift for transforming absurdity into insight, for using strangeness to describe something human. His latest film, Bugonia, would be no different.
A film that captures the tension between personal delusion and societal decay, Bugonia follows Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his neurodivergent cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), as they kidnap Big Pharma CEO, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone). Convinced that Michelle is an alien from the Andromeda species hell-bent on destroying humanity, Teddy believes he is the only one who can save his planet and manipulates his impressionable cousin into helping him.
Spoilers ahead.
At the center of Bugonia is Teddy, a standout not only for Plemons’ riveting performance, but for the sheer fascination of his character. He is a delusional, manipulative conspiracy theorist, willing to go as far as to chemically castrate himself and his cousin to ensure that nothing stands in the way of their mission. Yet, despite the extremity of his actions, you can see in his eyes that he believes every single word he is saying. As the film progresses, it delves into the roots of his behavior, revealing the traumas that have shaped him. From being molested as a child to his mother being left in a coma by a test drug from Michelle Fuller’s company, Teddy’s life has not been short of tragedy. These experiences help explain why he clings to conspiracy theories and offer some sympathy toward him without excusing his actions. While the audience gains an understanding of why Teddy carries these beliefs, the film shows that they ultimately divert him from real solutions, providing easy shortcuts to explain the difficulties in his life. The result is a character who is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating, whose outlook is understandable, yet whose actions remain morally indefensible.
On the other side of the spectrum lies our capitalist system, which produces people like Teddy. The physical manifestation of it is Michelle Fuller, the CEO of Auxolith, a pharmaceutical behemoth and the embodiment of corporate detachment disguised as empowerment. The film introduces her through a mirrored sequence of Teddy and Don’s morning routine. While they stumble through clumsy exercises in their messy house, she wakes up in her lavish, sun-drenched bedroom, cycling between an elaborate skincare routine, private martial arts lessons, and a handful of pills and vitamins. Her detachment is further shown when she instructs her assistant to tell employees they can leave early and spend time with their families… so long as their work is finished. It is an act of performative care that thinly masks her and her company’s obsession with productivity and efficiency. She is the neoliberal archetype of self-optimization, treating wellness and empathy as extensions of her brand.
Bees serve as one of Bugonia’s most important metaphors, threading together its critique of capitalism, class, and exploitation. The film opens with Teddy narrating over images of bees, explaining Colony Collapse Disorder, which is a phenomenon where bees mysteriously vanish, leaving behind the queen and her larvae. Teddy seems to be fond of the bees, as he and his cousin keep their own hive, and he later explains to Michelle that one of the Andromedans’ supposed crimes is “killing the honeybees.” The film uses these flying insects to explore the power imbalance between Teddy and Michelle. Teddy, who works at an Auxolith packaging warehouse, resembles the worker bee: vital to the system yet expendable, laboring endlessly for a colony that only sees him as a cog in the machine. Michelle, meanwhile, is the queen bee, as she is wealthy, important, and sustained by the work of others. Her company thrives on the labor of people like Teddy and his mother while offering them no autonomy. Through this metaphor, Bugonia exposes the parasitic hierarchy of capitalism, where the labor of many sustains the comfort of the few.
The film’s critique of capitalism extends beyond labor and into the realm of climate, as Lanthimos draws a direct connection between corporate greed and ecological decay. It shows that we as a species are killing our environment, yet continue to prioritize earnings over ecosystems and profit margins over people, such as Teddy’s mother. Rather than simply accusing CEOs for this inhumane destruction, Lanthimos literalizes the metaphor by having Michelle supposedly be an alien intent on annihilating the Earth. It’s a fitting exaggeration of how corporations treat the climate crisis.
As the film moves toward its conclusion (and this article reaches major third-act spoiler territory), Lanthimos brings this critique of capitalism and climate collapse to its most cynical point. The delusion that Michelle is an alien turns out to be true, but not in the way that Teddy imagines. The Andomadeans aren’t trying to destroy the Earth; they’re trying to save it from humans. This revelation reframes everything that came before, transforming the story from one about paranoia to one about perspective. The real danger, Lanthimos suggests, isn’t that aliens will come to wipe us out, but that humanity has already made itself the threat. In the end, Michelle returns to her ship and discusses with her people how humans are beyond saving; their greed is too deeply ingrained to overcome. It is made cynically clear that our flaws as neoliberal humans aren’t curable, as capitalism’s obsession with control and consumption has doomed us beyond redemption.
Stepping away from the film’s darker commentary, Bugonia is also just a deeply entertaining movie. Despite its subject matter, Lanthimos manages to find humor in the chaos, crafting scenes that make you laugh when you feel like you shouldn’t. The reactions in my theater say a lot about his ability to balance moments that are as funny as they are uncomfortable. Beyond that, I expected a movie much more alienating than it was, making it probably his most accessible film I’ve seen. It feels much more grounded than his previous work, yet still carries his signature strangeness and artistic visual style. One of my favorite examples of this is the shot of Teddy holding onto his floating mother in front of the Auxolith building. It’s a film that definitely embraces Lanthimos’ idiosyncrasy while feeling surprisingly fresh.
At a time when we are plagued by corporate greed, climate collapse, and the endless circulation of misinformation, Bugonia offers a dark yet humorous reflection of our world. Lanthimos doesn’t just tell a story about delusion or aliens; he holds a mirror to the systems and behaviors that have created the crises around us. What stands out most is how it reminds us that the stakes are real, the problems systemic, and yet human behavior is at the center of it all. At the end of the day, it isn’t about Teddy, Don, Michelle, or the Andromedans; it’s about how we as a society fail to see our own flaws, and that’s what makes it so compelling.
