Rob Reviews "Bugonia"

If Bugonia really is Yorgos Lanthimos’ last film for the foreseeable future (it is reported that he wants to pursue photography in his home country of Greece), this may not be the worst way to go.  I mean, it REALLY isn’t since Kinds of Kindness pretty much stunk on ice.

Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone join him again in this tale that can only be seen as Misery meets Of Mice and Men with a bit of The Twilight Zone added in for fun.  Based on the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet! and adapted for the American screen by Will Tracy, Plemons plays Teddy, a disturbed man that believes he has found the root of an alien invasion in their small industry-led town.  Along with his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), they abduct tech CEO Michelle (Stone), convinced that she is one of these invading aliens whose ship will be in our orbit in a few days during the lunar eclipse.

And then things get worse.

I set the bar INCREDIBLY low as I went into this screening given my distaste for Lanthimos’ last film and no desire to see the one before it in Poor Things.  IMDb listed it as a “black comedy,” but there was also a horror group in attendance, so I was a bit confused but determined to make it through this thing.  I cannot say that this is a bad film by any stretch, but I think the word I would use is “uneven”.  It’s like the script wants to be more than it is with plot devices that seem to have been thrown in there on a dare (much less one that did not need to be there at ALL when it comes to a local sheriff’s deputy) or to simply make it to a two-hour run time.  There IS some payoff to things I didn’t really expect there to be, but it also seemed inconsequential.

There really is only one performance that stood out for me here, and it belongs to Delbis.  Lanthimos went out of his way to cast as many unknowns as possible here, and does so very well.  Delbis’ Don is nothing short of flawless as the childlike cousin of the main character that has no other family left and is convinced that the reason for that is what keeps him focused on their mission.  I am looking forward to more from him in the years to come.

There are a couple of cringe-worthy moments here, but not enough for me to regret taking this screening.  The gore is done in a very tongue-in-cheek way (outside of a couple of moments), so there was not a lot of me diverting my eyes.  There is one other issue that I have here, but it is DEFINITELY a spoiler, so if you really want to know, you are more than welcome to reach out to me directly on that with the understanding of the reasoning why I am not putting it here.

Releasing Bugonia as a Halloween Day debut is a smart move, and I think that it will do well opening weekend.  I don’t see this as one of the films that will be at the top of Lanthimos’ legacy, but it also won’t be at the bottom.  If you are a fan of this type of thing, I would be interested in your thoughts of it once it is seen.