Political polarization foments paranoia; what if the "other side" really is evil? Our society's growing paranoid anxieties have been the focus of many movies this year, from Paul Thomas Anderson's underground leftist rebels in One Battle After Another, to Ari Aster's terminally online COVID-era antagonists in Eddington, to Jesse Armstrong's misinformation-fueled rioters in Mountainhead. And it's still hard for these directors to compete with real life, as 20,000 Epstein files incriminate the president and Washington insiders, the China lab leak theory seems increasingly likely to be true, and conspiracies about political killings against the right and the left spew unchecked.

Our stranger-than-fiction reality is one reason why Bugonia, the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos, doesn't exactly land its mark. While Lanthimos favorite Emma Stone continues her generational streak of starring roles, the script is as uneven as screenwriter Will Tracy's other outings, The Menu (2023) and The Regime (2024). Black humor, sociopolitical satire, downright goofiness, and flashes of violence all cross wires to tell a story that's competent but not any more effective than what's in the news.

Stone plays Michelle Fuller, a hard-nosed pharmaceutical CEO kidnapped by conspiracy theorist Teddy (the manic and ever-talented Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (autistic newcomer Aidan Delbis, who impressively stands his own against his veteran co-stars). Teddy and Don are convinced that Michelle is an alien from the race of "Andromedans," who have supposedly been responsible for destroying human communities and honeybee colonies alike. Teddy points to her firm's clinical trials — including one that nearly killed his mom — as a prime example of the Andromedan abuse of Earth, and demands that Michelle (now being kept hostage in their basement) communicate with her "emperor" to negotiate a stop to the alien interference. The balance of power between the trio shifts constantly, as they size each other up, make and break agreements, and try to make it out of the house alive. And brief appearances from supporting characters, like an awkward cop (Stavros Halkias) or Teddy's sick mom (Alicia Silverstone), are sparse but add a little additional color. 

The most interesting throughline of Bugonia is our increasingly fraught relationship to rich and powerful tech CEOs — and how they convincingly pull the wool over Americans' eyes on everything from wealth inequality and work ethic to scientific advancement and underregulation. Stone, as Michelle, is phenomenal at striking this eerie contemporary tone. Her appearance early in the story, filming a manicured corporate HR video, is as artificial as her desperate claims to be (or not to be) an alien to Teddy and Don in their basement. She lies easily, whatever her situation requires. Her raw physicality, from an American Psycho-style workout to a violent escape plan, remind us that in the 21st century, fitness is a status symbol. And her flashback apology for a pharmaceutical trial gone wrong hits all the "right notes," but is mediated by dark sunglasses and an army of lawyers. We've seen the same speech from billionaires faking remorse for everything from the opioid crisis to disinformation, throwing money but feeling nothing to absolve their wrongdoings. They're media-trained but fundamentally inhuman, Andromedan or not. 

But Lanthimos tries to do too much outside of this fascinating portrait of a tech executive. He's most apparently interested in the topic of conspiracy and belief — such as the childhood traumas that led Teddy down his online alien rabbithole, or the blind faith that Don has in his seemingly wise older cousin. At times these hit home, especially watching Don struggle to reconcile his own critical thinking with what he's hearing from Teddy (evoking the toughest moments from Of Mice and Men). But more often than not, it feels like retreading common ground that's not built-for-function in 2025 — just a nod to Steinbeck, or a more stale version of PTA and Armstrong's already-imperfect offerings. 

The Greek director also demonstrates surface-level interest in environmentalism, such as with the largely overblown concern about honeybee extinction as a tepid metaphor for what we're doing to ourselves through climate change and mortal meanness. When the film finally arrives at its finale — a "twist" predictable from the very premise — he tries to cash in on some of this ecological theme, but it's too little too late, and the concluding sequence is especially overwrought and underbaked.

On the technical side, Bugonia isn't too memorable, either — and can be unfavorably compared to any number of Lanthimos' previous outings. It's his most expensive film yet, for instance, but besides hopefully big paychecks for the two leading actors, the $55 million budget isn't visible on-screen in the same way it might have been in the otherworldly vistas of Poor Things (2023) or the uncanny buildings of The Lobster (2015). Jerskin Fendrix's buzzing score is solid but is sometimes intrusive, and doesn't hit the spooky highs of the soundtrack from The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2015). And Bugonia's small basement settings are boringly shot by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, even though Lanthimos is no stranger to claustrophobic settings; perhaps his greatest film, Dogtooth (2009), makes use of sharp, unforgiving camera angles that are foregone here for relatively repetitive shot-reverse-shot between characters. Even the VistaVision format doesn't add the same pop it did in The Brutalist (2024).

Lanthimos is one of the modern kings of feel-bad movies, and Bugonia is another installment in the genre; too bad he's outclassed by real life these days.