Of the films released in 2025, perhaps Bugonia was one of the less likely: a blended genre comedy-come-thriller remaking a South Korean film with director Yorgos Lanthimos and actor Emma Stone. It is a properly weird one, with a deliberately heightened and artificial approach and a difficult tone. Like it, hate it: almost everybody’s response is valid on this movie.

Stone plays pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller, who is kidnapped from outside of her home by conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Teddy is convinced Michelle is a member of an alien species living on Earth in secret and conducting experiments on human beings. Furthermore, he has just four days to convince Michelle to arrange a meeting with her Andromedan emperor to negotiate their departure from the planet.

Teddy is, of course, severely emotionally damaged. He is cordial, until he is not. He seems non-violent, until he is. Played wonderfully by Jesse Plemons, he is a mad bundle of contradictions: smart but also deeply stupid, perceptive yet gullible, charismatic but repellent. He is a true believer; he has not doubt that the woman he has kidnapped is not even human.

It is with his victim that things get particularly interesting. As played by Emma Stone, Michelle Fuller is a corporate head who feigns concern for her employees while simultaneously not caring about them at all. When her business has led to some deaths, she has been polite but uncaring. When she talks with her captor, it is as a high-flying executive negotiating the best deal. She might be human, but she is struggling to have some humanity. Stone plays the character with the sharp comic edge that has dominated her career, and that allows the less palatable aspects of Michelle’s life and personality sneak up on the viewer.

Full credit to the production for casting Aidan Delbis as Don. The character is autistic, and so is the actor. While there are some aspects to his story arc that do not quite sit comfortably, it remains a solid lesson in how to represent disability and neurodivergence correctly in film.

The film is dominated by an unsettled tone, and an unwillingness to sit neatly with a single style. It is funny when it needs to be, and dramatic too, and has the ability to turn on a dime to be shockingly violent or even rather frightening. Its one constant appears to be its absurdity, and that has seen Bugonia get awkwardly shelved by some as a comedy. Such classification ignores its greatest strength, which is its mercurial approach to genre.

Once again Lanthimos is collaborating with director of photography Robbie Ryan (The Favourite, Poor Things). This time around they use a fabulous amount of vivid colour, along with a 3:2 aspect ratio and a shoot undertaken entirely in VistaVision. It looks tremendously bright and bold, which belies its limited locations – most of the film takes place in a basement.

There is a deep and sweaty undercurrent of misanthropy throughout Bugonia, one that feels more overt and aggressive than anything seen in Lanthimos’ previous English-language films. Everybody is terrible, and gullible, and cruel. There is a strong sense that deeply flawed people have been pushed up against one another, and that all of them are terrible.

Is this peak Lanthimos? Probably not, but it’s fascinating stuff – even when its appeal is really going to vary from one viewer to another.