With films like Poor Things, The Favourite, The Lobster, and more, director Yorgos Lanthimos has become one of the most exciting directors working today. It’s because he can take a relatively normal subject and turn it incredibly weird or take an incredibly weird subject and make it seem normal. We aren’t quite sure which one of those his next film, Bugonia, is yet, but its first teaser all but assures us it’s pure Yorgos.
Opening wide on Halloween, Bugonia stars Emma Stone as a CEO who is kidnapped by two “conspiracy theory-obsessed young men” played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis. These men believe that Stone is an alien who plans to take over the world. Is that true? Is it not? Watch the first teaser and make the decision for yourself.
What I love about this teaser is that it gives us a decent sense of the setup to the movie, and only a tease of the madness that occurs later. If you saw this in a theater, unaware of what the movie was, you’d think it was just a kind of basic kidnapping/home invasion story. But no, not from Yorgos Lanthimos. Things seem to get weird and intense, and we have a feeling that Stone isn’t an alien, but the fears of the men aren’t wrong either. She probably does want to take over the world in some creepy, money-hungry way. She’s just doing it as a human being.
Or, you know, she is an alien, and things go really off the deep end.
Bugonia was written by Will Tracy, who worked on HBO’s Succession and did 2022’s surprising horror film, The Menu. Both of those projects are about the evils of wealth and greed, so we’d imagine that follows suit here. Just with a lot of scared Emma Stone, whacked-out Jesse Plemons, and Yorgos controlling it all.
The film opens in limited release October 24 before going wide on October 31.
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