Emma Stone, Yorgos Lanthimos, and a Satirical Gut Punch I Was Not Expecting

Bugonia

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos · Peacock, 2025

Two conspiracy-obsessed men kidnap Michelle Fuller, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, convinced she is an alien from Andromeda sent to destroy Earth’s bees. The situation is absurd. The grief underneath it is not.

“I’m not saying she’s an alien. I’m saying I have enough evidence that I can’t afford not to act on it.”

What It Actually Felt Like

Here’s the full rewritten “What It Actually Felt Like” section with the environmental layer folded in:

What It Actually Felt Like

Emma Stone, dark satire, and conspiracy theories in a Lanthimos film is an easy yes from me. But this movie is doing something more specific than the premise suggests and I want to talk about that.

The part that stuck with me first: Teddy’s mother is in a coma because she participated in a clinical trial for Auxolith, the company Michelle runs. His grief is real. The harm is documented. The corporation that caused it is sitting right in front of him. But instead of reckoning with that directly, Teddy has built an elaborate alien mythology around it — and that mythology is exactly what makes him impossible to take seriously. The film is asking what happens when real institutional harm gets processed into something so unbelievable that it ends up protecting the people who caused it. Auxolith stays intact. Nobody is held accountable. The conspiracy theory does the corporation’s work for it.

And then there’s the bees. Colony collapse disorder is real, the causes are largely human, and a pharmaceutical conglomerate is not exactly unconnected from the agricultural and chemical systems destroying bee populations. Teddy knows something is wrong. He can feel it. He just can’t locate it correctly because he’s been handed a framework that points everywhere except at the actual source. The Andromedans are killing the bees. It’s not us. It was never us.

Then there’s the title itself. Bugonia is an ancient folk ritual — bees spontaneously regenerating from the carcass of an ox. New life from death, no human involvement required. Lanthimos naming the film that feels deliberate and a little pointed. The bees don’t need us to save them. They need us to stop. The world has its own mechanisms for regeneration and we keep interrupting them and then building mythology around why it isn’t our fault.

Jesse Plemons refuses to let Teddy be a joke and the film is better for it. You understand him even when you can’t follow him. Emma Stone plays Michelle with a calm that never fully breaks, which works because the film is interested in how power holds itself together even when the people holding it are barely breathing.

The Honest Part

The ending is divisive. I understand both sides but I think what Lanthimos chooses to do in the final act deflates some of the tension the film spent two hours building. It costs the movie something. Up until that point I think this is one of the sharpest things he’s made.

Who This Is For

Anyone who’s been thinking about conspiracy theories as a cultural phenomenon and wants a film that takes that seriously without being preachy about it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐  Weird, sharp, and doing real work underneath the chaos. The ending cost it half a star.

Tags  dark comedy, thriller, Lanthimos, Emma Stone, conspiracy, Peacock, satire, mood: weird and sharp