Bugonia: Is It Aliens Ruining the World, or Just Us?
by Sydney Reyes
If aliens are among us, it makes sense that they’d use their galactic prowess to suppress our mundane species. Bugonia (2025), Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film, demonstrates how we could potentially fight them off—you could totally shave their head to cut off their communication with each other, or even apply antihistamine cream to hinder the alien from reaching out to the mother ship. Among all this madness, the film centers around a conspiracy-obsessed Teddy (Jesse Plemons) who, along with his cousin and sidekick Don (Aidan Delbis), kidnaps Auxolith CEO Michelle (Emma Stone) on the grounds that she is an alien and her pharmaceutical corporation is dangerous to Earth. It’s an abduction plot with a lot to offer, from the extra-terrestrial to tragic backstories, class conflict, and psychological thrills. In fact, Bugonia is a remake of the South Korean film, Save the Green Planet (2003). Now, I’m not the biggest fan of western remakes. If the source material holds up, there’s no point in rehashing what has already been said. But when paired with names to be reckoned with, respect for the original work, and relevant themes, the result could be something note-worthy.
It’s quite challenging to watch Bugonia with one hundred percent fresh eyes, what with Save the Green Planet’s existing impact. And while watching, I often found myself comparing the two films. The original film is more erratic, containing lots of crazy fight scenes, campy editing, and quirkier characters. Bugonia takes a calmer approach, homing in on the kidnapper and captive relationship. This calmness has a quiet lethality to it, nailing its harsh but true messages. The remake is dialogue-heavy, and grips us with the struggle of each side to overpower the other. Stone and Plemmons compliment each other, working together to deliver a suspense-filled narrative and disprove the other of their alien claim. Delbis’ character cushions us from Stone and Plemmons’ attacks through his purity and innocence, yet he is emotive when truly needed. Bugonia is overall more clean, not leaving room for other tangents, while Save the Green Planet is sillier. Lanthimos clearly knew what he wanted to highlight with his remake, and he delivered.
With Lanthimos himself as director, Stone and Plemmons as stellar performers, and elevated horror pioneer Ari Aster as a producer, it feels like the Avengers of modern thrillers coming together to give love to an already excellent idea. The care and respect for the original film is hard to miss. Every scene felt intentional and well-explained. Lanthimos’ flair for elaborate sets and Frankenstein-esque odd magic, as seen in Poor Things (2023), stands out where it matters, establishing him as the perfect director to retell this story. In true Lanthimos fashion, Bugonia is filled with snippets of absurdity that momentarily jerk us out of reality. Aster’s expertise in using thrillers to comment on the state of society is also palpable in this project. Bugonia doesn't offer something different from Save the Green Planet or try to override its credibility. The film only slightly shifts the perspective to give a contemplative and contemporary take.
The film is an apt remake, and creatively confronts an issue that is relevant today. Now more than ever, conspiracy theories are weaponized to falsely inform people of their understanding of the world. Teddy perfectly represents someone who has drowned in conspiracies—Plemmons’ performance shows that this consuming behavior can cause people to do dangerous things in the name of their belief. The internet and the rise of isolation deeply exacerbate this, leading to online misinformation translating into real-life demonstrations, conflict, and hate. One example of this is the resurgence of anti-vaccination sentiment with the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to some of the worst paranoia we’ve seen in modern times. Fears that the COVID vaccine contains technology to surveil our every move, or that it causes other conditions to manifest like autism or cancer, merely perpetuate baseless and discriminatory ideas, further adding to the division and conflict that hinder us from progress. Not unlike reality, Bugonia reveals that Auxolith had its fair share of failed pharmaceutical experiments, unfair cover-ups, and Michelle herself might have had a hand in corporate evil. However, conspiracists like Teddy using fallacies to explain these flaws and proceeding to torture a person involved goes against everything we should stand for as humans. The film therefore turns a mirror on the unspeakable acts we commit as a result of our own paranoia.
If a western remake—a well-made one at that—is what it takes to not only reignite attention on the original work, but foster discussions of how conspiracies have caused an epidemic of misinformed animosity, then it’s worth it. Bugonia suggests that it might not be aliens from outer space who are ruining the world, but those who call the planet their home. Lanthimos expresses this sentiment in a striking manner, making for one of the most powerfully blunt endings this year. Bugonia is a must-see, and it compels us to wonder if we’ve truly gone too far and forgotten our humanity, or if it’ll only get worse.