{"id":32361,"date":"2025-10-30T01:09:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T08:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=32361"},"modified":"2025-10-30T01:09:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T08:09:17","slug":"lanthimos-delivers-more-bizarreness-with-bugonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=32361","title":{"rendered":"Lanthimos Delivers More Bizarreness with BUGONIA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Running Time: 118 minutes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This film from Focus Features opens in wide release at theaters on October 31st<\/sup>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some time now, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has been\nmaking provocative arthouse fare featuring eccentric characters and bizarre\nscenarios that usually result in a raised eyebrow. Many of his titles have a\ndark sense of humor, including The Lobster <\/em>and The Favourite<\/em>.\nI\u2019ve enjoyed those pictures, but not every title in his catalog. His latest is Bugonia<\/em>,\nwhich is a remake of a 2003 South Korean picture. It\u2019s also the closest the\nfilmmaker has ever come to making a genre movie. The movie combines outlandish\nscience-fiction and horror elements, yet looks and feels like a Lanthimos\nproject. So, as you might expect, the results won\u2019t be for everyone. But I was\ngenerally amused by this enterprise and would recommend it to those who admire\nhis work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) is a heartless CEO at a\npharmaceutical company. As the film begins, the executive is stiffly trying to\npromote a friendlier work culture, but it\u2019s clear the claims are just an act.\nOne day, she is kidnapped by Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his neurodivergent\ncousin Don (Aidan Delbis) and taken to their remote farm. Teddy is a conspiracy\ntheorist who is certain that Fuller is part of an alien species called\nAndromedans. He believes that her kind are infiltrating the planet and taking\ncontrol. After telling the woman about her species and what he thinks they\u2019re\nup to, he demands she set up a meeting with himself and the Andromedan leader\nin order to convince them to leave Earth. Fuller tries various tactics to try\nand calm her captors down, initially denying the claims, and later accepting\nthem, buying time in order to escape or be rescued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a dark comedy with satirical elements, and it\u2019s\nimportant to realize that the main point of the film seems to be that humanity\nis horrible and not worth saving. Virtually all the characters involved either\nhave psychological issues, are unhinged, or at the very least appear selfish\nand devious. There really isn\u2019t anyone to relate to here. Fuller is a business\nleader who doesn\u2019t care for anyone around her, Teddy\u2019s crazed behavior can veer\ninto violence, and the simple Don is clearly under the control of his relative.\nThe next biggest character is Casey (Stavros Halkias), a local constable who\nchecks-in a little too regularly with the family and shares a dark past. Oh,\nand the film makes a point of noting the role of humans in exterminating other\nspecies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, there is a very dark sense of humor running\nthroughout the story to keep viewers engaged, at the expense of the\nself-involved leads. Kidnapper Terry is making absurd-sounding claims and\nbehaving bizarrely, while the manipulative and icy Fuller alternates through\nseveral states. And there are awkward conversations with Casey as well that get\nunsettling as his past is revealed. This movie could have been a disaster,\ngiven the horribleness of the characters and the themes presented, if the performers\nweren\u2019t charismatic. But everyone involved balances the cruelty and conflict\nwith humor exceptionally well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And, when violence erupts, it\u2019s playfully exaggerated. A\ncouple of moments that are genuinely disturbing, but as the picture goes in\nsome truly surreal directions, most of these unexpected shocks result in\nchuckles. The photography and set design are striking as well. It may feature\nelements familiar to low-budget genre films and is only set in a few locations\n(the main farmhouse being quite shabby), but the movie looks slick and stylish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as negative aspects go, I have now seen enough\neccentric entries from the filmmaker to be able to surmise fairly easily where\nhis stories are heading. Once you realize it, some script elements feel blunt\nand direct, lacking any cryptic or veiled implications. It\u2019s just a matter of\nwaiting for the picture to get to where you assume it must be going, and that\nreduces some of the surprise and suspense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while the final message is explicitly grim, it is\nhumorously delivered by an excellent cast with a few memorably wild events\ntaking place. For me, Bugonia<\/em> doesn\u2019t rank at the top of Lanthimos\nmovies, but it is a genre picture that offers enough quirks, oddities and\ngross-out moments to earn a recommendation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Running Time: 118 minutes This film from Focus Features opens in wide release at theaters on October 31st. For some time now, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has been making provocative arthouse fare featuring eccentric characters and bizarre scenarios that usually result in a raised eyebrow. Many of his titles have a dark sense of humor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":32362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[216,865,1851,3652,3653,3654,3655,6942,7700,9319,10638,11671,17776,18991,19397,24660],"class_list":["post-32361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-216","tag-aidan-delbis","tag-arthouse","tag-bugonia","tag-bugonia-film-review","tag-bugonia-movie-review","tag-bugonia-review","tag-emma-stone","tag-focus-features","tag-horror","tag-jesse-plemons","tag-kidnapping","tag-science-fiction-2","tag-stavros-halkias","tag-surreal","tag-yougos-lanthimos"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}