Bugonia

2025

While many acting awards are doing away with gendered categories (and thereby stealing the positive fruits of feminism by asserting that men and women are not simply equal but the same), the Golden Globes are at a tipping point when it comes to another distinction. Those awards split many categories into “Drama” and “Comedy or Musical”. This is extremely problematic to begin with, because why aren’t musicals sorted into Comedy and Drama? But more and more, these categories mean less and less. While genre films still fill multiplexes, award-worthy movies are progressively reflecting a shift to a post-genre world. Look at the presumed Best Picture winner for this year: One Battle After Another. It is a kidnapping drama, a chase movie, an action-thriller with a truly terrifying villain…and consistently quite funny. And so, it ended up in Comedy at the Golden Globes along with more than a couple of films and television programs that can make only a dubious claim to that descriptor. Another prime example: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia.

That film was also submitted to the Globes as a Comedy—and it can be very funny, depending on the perspective you watch it from—but just how hilarious can a film be when it is about two men abducting a woman, chaining her in their basement, and torturing her while dealing with mental illness, sexual abuse, opioid addiction, toxic internet culture, climate change, corporate non-speak, and the question of whether the human race deserves to inherit the Earth?

I welcome these post-genre titles. My favorite novels almost always combine or allude genres. I think the shift is a pretty spot-on reflection of our current culture, where we can’t even agree about reality. And that is a large theme of Bugonia. At base, Jesse Plemons’s Teddy attempts to make Emma Stone’s Michelle admit that she is an extraterrestrial Andromedan seeking to destroy humanity by reducing it to its lowest animal crudity. It is also about dialogue—and whether it can exist—between boardroom doublespeak and fanatical prooftexting. In a year swarming with films about the problems of our current world culture, this one does the best job of discussing it in full and various ways.

Now, let me name my bias. I considered starting with that crucial step but didn’t want the review to be focused on it. Over the years—through films like The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite, and the execrable Poor Things, Lanthimos has spent all the goodwill I could give him. I could not trust him as a director, and I swore to stop watching his films. However, Bugonia, while still bearing the marks of the director’s style, is a much more “normal” movie than any of his others and definitely the best of his career so far. Gone are the affectless line readings. Stone and Plemons are let loose to act all the complex material writer Will Tracy has given them. Also gone is the aberrant and endless sex of Poor Things, making way for a film that doesn’t rely on nudity and perverse shock value for its impact. There is violence and gore, but it is more often overplayed for comedic effect than disturbingly voyeuristic or gratuitous, as in the director’s earlier films. In truth, for all my concern, this is a good movie! And, yes, comic, but certainly not to be labeled “a comedy” that might sit beside Spinal Tap or The Naked Gun. While such true comedies obviously still exist, we need to find ways of speaking about films like Bugonia without relying on genre labels that don’t suffice.

What is the best thing about Bugonia (aside from the choice of final song)? The title. Who knew? It is not mentioned in the movie, and the obscurity of the word is leveraged by the marketing campaign. Bugs? Begonias? (Both suggestions are immediately put on screen.) No, “bugonia” turns out to be a Greek word. (Lanthimos is Greek, after all.) It refers to an ancient ritual in which a bull or ox was sacrificed in order to create new bees. (Much as medieval scholars thought rotting meat turned into maggots, the dead cow was believed to spontaneously generate bees.) I will leave the many wonderful suggestions this image creates in your hands, for now. If you choose to watch the film, look it up AFTERWARD. ScreenRant has a particularly thorough treatment you can access via this link. If you decide never to watch the film, go there now.

Surprises are always a welcome thing, and Bugonia was a big one for me. I had to wait until I could discuss it with a fellow Christian cinephile, though, as I was not going to risk what parental guidance sites called disturbing and extreme violence. After watching it, I understand their choice of each of those words…and yet this is no Saw (or whatever pops into your head when you read that description). Once again, language fails us. We must always be looking for ways to speak about things with as much nuance and precision as possible. But this is a tough case.