Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Bugonia’Films that leave you scratching your head, or even banging it against the wall trying to figure out its deeper meaning, can be one of two things: vague failures of film that do not communicate their message or even seem to have one to begin with, or masterpieces of commentary that invite the audience to come to their own conclusion, giving them all the pieces they need to do so. Bugonia is, without a doubt, the latter of the two. Director Yorgos Lanthimos brings his trademark weirdness to Bugonia, with a story that seems too wild to be plausible, only to give the audience severe whiplash with a twist that should reside among the very best in cinema.
The central premise of Bugonia is that Michelle (Emma Stone), the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, is kidnapped by two men who claim she is an alien, and try to convince her to contact her mothership so they can save the world. Based on the Korean film Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia‘s premise may seem bizarre, and it is, but that insanity allows for a fascinating critique of conspiracy theorists and the state of misinformation in the modern age. In the end, while Bugonia‘s ending is objectively less bleak than that of Save the Green Planet!, it still invites the audience to decide whether they side with one character or another, or if there is a third way of thinking that breaks free of the dogma bogging down political discourse.
‘Bugonia’s Build to the Third Act Keeps the Audience Guessing
Up until the third act of Bugonia, Lanthimos’ directing and Will Tracy‘s script do an effective job of keeping the audience guessing as to who is in the right. While Michelle is the obviously sympathetic character, subject to brutal electrocution torture from Teddy (Jesse Plemons), Bugonia does not make Teddy completely evil either. Not only are we shown his traumatic past with a drug-addicted mother who was put in a coma due to Michelle’s company giving her an experimental drug, but both sides make fascinating points about the state of capitalism. Teddy highlights how workers, much like bees, are exploited by the relentless pursuit of growth and profit, which is ultimately harming the planet. Meanwhile, Michelle notes that her company is genuinely striving to make a positive impact through its medical research. However, in both cases, the characters follow up these points with ridiculous rationales, which are most clearly seen during the dinner scene and the fight that occurs afterward. Teddy’s is obviously illogical, with him believing this is part of an alien conspiracy, yet Michelle’s is incredibly dark, believing that those who don’t succeed in this society are merely losers.
This tension and never-ending arguing between the two leaves Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy’s cousin, in an almost impossible position. He is clearly being pushed into assisting Teddy out of fear of being rejected by him, but Michelle’s attempts to gain his trust are clearly only so that he lets her go, after which we assume he will also be arrested, despite Michelle saying she’ll fight for him. When a police officer (Stavros Kalkias), who is implied to have abused Teddy, arrives, Michelle and Don are left alone while Teddy distracts him. Michelle tells Don that he will be fine if she is let go, and Don asks if Michelle will take him and Teddy onto their ship if she is indeed an alien, showing Don’s slipping grip on which reality he believes in. Michelle assures him she will, and that is when Don tells her to tell Teddy he loves him, and shoots himself in the head with a shotgun. Most likely, Don realized that Michelle was saying whatever she had to, and no matter what was true, there was not going to be a happy ending for him or his cousin. It’s a tragic end for a tragic character, and the gunshot is heard by the police officer, whom Teddy murders by throwing his bees on him. When Teddy comes downstairs and discovers Don, the final confrontation begins.
Michelle is Freed After Teddy Accidentally Explodes Himself in ‘Bugonia’
While it seems like Teddy will kill Michelle as vengeance for Don’s death, Michelle seemingly tries a desperate effort to manipulate him. She tells Teddy that she is indeed an anien, and Teddy’s mother is part of their experiment. To wake her up out of her coma, Teddy merely needs to inject her with the anti-freeze in Michelle’s car, which she claims is actually a cure. Teddy hobbles Michelle’s knee and runs off to do so, leaving Michelle alone to search Don’s pockets and unchain herself. Michelle then finds a secret room and enters, where she finds the bodies of Teddy’s former victims, chopped up and experimented on. Meanwhile, Teddy injects his mother with the anti-freeze, which turned out not to be a cure, as Michelle stated. As she dies, Teddy flees back home. However, Michelle hasn’t fled, and seems rather calm after finding a room full of bodies, boldly asking Teddy, “How many of them were Andromedans?!” to which Teddy replies, “Two,” a seemingly rational number that sees Teddy admit he got it wrong when identifying other aliens in the past.
Despite being furious at his mother’s death, Michelle’s calm demeanor unsettles him, allowing her to employ her final tactic to escape. In what seems to flip Teddy’s conspiracy on its head, Michelle tells him that Andromedans created humanity, but humanity created their own experiments that led to “thermonuclear war,” and Noah’s Ark were the survivors who died and left behind a human race far more aggressive and weak compared to the Andromedans’ original creation, calling Teddy a “sad ape.” Michelle claims Teddy’s mother was indeed a part of an experiment to take the worst of humanity and better them, with hundreds of experiments occurring across the globe.
With Teddy shocked and believing this story, Michelle tells him she will indeed beam them up to the Andromedan ship if he takes her to her workplace, where the teleporter is, and Teddy can help save humanity. It seems like a lie, and when they arrive in Michelle’s office, she pulls out a calculator and claims it is a device that sends a 58-digit code to the mothership. Teddy reveals he is wearing a homemade explosive pack, and Michelle tells him the teleporter is in the closet — a seemingly ridiculous trick. Teddy gets in, and Michelle counts down from three, seemingly preparing to run away. Yet, before she can finish, Teddy’s bomb goes off, sending his head hurtling at Michelle, knocking her out. This is changed from the original Save the Green Planet!, where Teddy’s Korean equivalent is killed by police, a far less comedic and more ironic death, considering what happens next.
Michelle’s True Biology is Finally Revealed in ‘Bugonia’
At first, it seems Michelle is an innocent victim who is finally free, until she escapes an ambulance taking her to the hospital and returns to the crime scene. Michelle uses the calculator to actually beam herself up to the Andromedan ship, which matches Teddy’s earlier renderings of what it must look like. She and the other Andromedans declare humanity a failed experiment because of what Teddy did and the lack of success with other trials, and Michelle pops a bubble over a model Flat Earth, leading to images of dead humans across the globe while “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” plays. However, unlike the Save the Green Planet! ending, the animals and planet itself are spared, leaving hope for a more balanced nature on Earth.
The real question is: just what the hell does this mean? Before conspiracy theorists in our world start high-fiving, no, this isn’t meant to vindicate Teddy, but instead, as Plemons himself points out, shows how “The fears that drive people to conspiracy theories are absolutely correct.” As reflected in Teddy and Michelle’s arguments, we can all feel that something is wrong in today’s society, but who is to blame, and who do we believe? Tracey explains it as how Teddy has “not really been given a better story to believe in,” so he blames aliens that he hears about through podcasts online. It’s also not meant to vindicate capitalism or powerful figures such as Michelle and the Andromedans. Instead, Bugonia is arguing that, if we don’t eventually stop the constant ideological point-scoring, the supposed search for truth, and the extremes people go to to be correct, might be what creates our doom in the end, with the victims never really knowing why it had to happen.
Bugonia is now playing in theaters.
- Release Date
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October 31, 2025
- Runtime
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118 minutes
- Director
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Yorgos Lanthimos
- Writers
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Will Tracy, Jang Joon-hwan
- Producers
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Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Emma Stone, Lars Knudsen, Miky Lee, Ari Aster, Jerry Kyoungboum Ko
