Bugonia
My favourite film podcast, Michael & Us, shocked me when they trashed this film with a vehemence I found both unexpected and incomprehensible. I find myself in the position of Lot, pleading with the LORD to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if I can find enough just causes. And I believe I have.
It is a remake of a 2003 Korean film that I have not seen. I’m told it is a faithful remake, but it does incorporate a new element that seems to have been completely misread by the hosts of Michael & Us that is also a vital clue to why the film ends in the way it does. Bugonia, a title which I think is never explained in the film, is a process by which ancient farmers believed they could spawn bees. To say much more about it might spoiler the film, but bees offer the skeleton key to the film, and not in the way our podcast hosts seem to have understood it. Terry Gatz (Jesse Plemons) is a beekeeper, as his mother (Alicia Silverstone) was before him. Bees have long had a symbolic value to humans, with even Napoleon adopting it as a personal emblem to evoke memories of the early French king Childeric. Childeric was of the Merovingian royal house, and the link between the Merovingians and all kind of conspiracy theorising is further reflected in the film, because Gatz is someone who has developed an elaborate conspiracy theory of his own. This motivates him to kidnap the chemical firm executive Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) whose company has been involved in some scandals. These scandals acquire more and more significance as the story progress. Gatz initially comes across as a sad lunatic, but his conspiracy theory masks more base motivations.
There is a blunder in the film in the way his politics are handled. This blunder reflects the problems in our own time that the film critiques. It is trying not to take sides, because director Yogos Lanthimos knows that the moment he chooses a position, part of the wider audience out there will find this the Achilles’ heel that allows it to ‘cancel’ Lanthimos as ‘biased’ or even a tool of some conspiracy. For too many people the stakes nowadays are too high not to carry on placing every single artistic effort into either the ‘Us’ or the ‘Them’ pigeonhole. So he is forced to depoliticise Gatz. This is a gesture to ensure maximum receptiveness, but it also weakens the politics of the film. A similar calculation results in Lanthimos being unable to commit to the idea that Fuller is a good or bad person. Lanthimos seems to be apologising for everyone in order to maintain the broadest appeal.
For me the most baffling scene is when Fuller is being held in the cellar by Gatz’ minion, the evidently autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Don constantly struggles in the film with his identity. Likewise, Gatz constantly encourages Don to think better of himself, but at the same time lectures him about the conspiracy they are fighting, without really showing his work, his footnotes. Gatz salves his conscience this way, while denying Don any agency. When Don finally does take his fate in his hands, it makes no sense because his struggle with the alternative viewpoints of Gatz and Fuller is never really seen from within him. Despite seemingly a crucial character, he is rapidly written out at the moment where his interventions might have been most illuminating.
Much of the latter two-thirds of the film take place indoors or at night, reflecting the very dark psychological world of the film. Fuller’s company has poisoned people with its research. Gatz has a secret room straight out of a horror film. Playing to our sympathy, though, Gatz has been made a victim by his one-time babysitter, now a sheriff, Casey Boyd (Stavros Halkias). Boyd constantly is apologising to Gatz for some unspecified action in the past, that he now regrets. Rather like Gatz’ gestures towards Don’s self-image, Boyd seems to be trying to build a better relationship without really taking responsibility for whatever he has done.
And I think here we come to one of the two things that make this film better than the hosts of Michael & Us were willing to entertain. Will Tracy’s script is wrestling with the idea of responsibility. While we are busy doing one thing, we may be neglecting something more important. The experiments of Fuller’s company turn out to be an attempt to salve the consciences of Fuller and her associates for their past actions. Boyd and Gatz in turn take advantage of a weaker individual in a personal transaction. Gatz towards the end is told a lie. His preconceptions, having been affirmed, lead him to believe this new information because it fits his worldview. He can no longer test its truth. This blindness to the evidence of his senses has disastrous consequences for which he should only blame himself. BUGONIA asks the audience to question its own responsibility for the divisions and the abuses of nature that seem to be driving humanity towards extinction. In that way, it is something of a throwback to the films of nuclear war paranoia, which perhaps explains the closing sequence’s inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE.
The other of the two strengths is a revelation that can easily be dismissed as a cheap trick or deus ex machina solution to having been written into a corner. I don’t think it’s a particularly sophisticated gesture, but it still forces the audience either to reconsider all their prior judgements and expectations, or to ponder how their successful anticipation redefines their relationship to the characters of BUGONIA and to the global crises outside the cinema. Colony collapse disorder features prominently early on in the film. Imagine if you were a bee, trying to understand that. We don’t really know what they are thinking (and the scathing metaphor of ‘the hive mind’ suggests we wouldn’t take it seriously if we did). We can’t even explain it ourselves, although we have plenty of theories. Lanthimos raises the question of whether what is going on in the world today represents a human version of colony collapse disorder. I think without this cheap trick, the film would fail in this intent, because any other resolution would just have encourage us to carry on as we are.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
It is a remake of a 2003 Korean film that I have not seen. I’m told it is a faithful remake, but it does incorporate a new element that seems to have been completely misread by the hosts of Michael & Us that is also a vital clue to why the film ends in the way it does. Bugonia, a title which I think is never explained in the film, is a process by which ancient farmers believed they could spawn bees. To say much more about it might spoiler the film, but bees offer the skeleton key to the film, and not in the way our podcast hosts seem to have understood it. Terry Gatz (Jesse Plemons) is a beekeeper, as his mother (Alicia Silverstone) was before him. Bees have long had a symbolic value to humans, with even Napoleon adopting it as a personal emblem to evoke memories of the early French king Childeric. Childeric was of the Merovingian royal house, and the link between the Merovingians and all kind of conspiracy theorising is further reflected in the film, because Gatz is someone who has developed an elaborate conspiracy theory of his own. This motivates him to kidnap the chemical firm executive Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) whose company has been involved in some scandals. These scandals acquire more and more significance as the story progress. Gatz initially comes across as a sad lunatic, but his conspiracy theory masks more base motivations.
There is a blunder in the film in the way his politics are handled. This blunder reflects the problems in our own time that the film critiques. It is trying not to take sides, because director Yogos Lanthimos knows that the moment he chooses a position, part of the wider audience out there will find this the Achilles’ heel that allows it to ‘cancel’ Lanthimos as ‘biased’ or even a tool of some conspiracy. For too many people the stakes nowadays are too high not to carry on placing every single artistic effort into either the ‘Us’ or the ‘Them’ pigeonhole. So he is forced to depoliticise Gatz. This is a gesture to ensure maximum receptiveness, but it also weakens the politics of the film. A similar calculation results in Lanthimos being unable to commit to the idea that Fuller is a good or bad person. Lanthimos seems to be apologising for everyone in order to maintain the broadest appeal.
For me the most baffling scene is when Fuller is being held in the cellar by Gatz’ minion, the evidently autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Don constantly struggles in the film with his identity. Likewise, Gatz constantly encourages Don to think better of himself, but at the same time lectures him about the conspiracy they are fighting, without really showing his work, his footnotes. Gatz salves his conscience this way, while denying Don any agency. When Don finally does take his fate in his hands, it makes no sense because his struggle with the alternative viewpoints of Gatz and Fuller is never really seen from within him. Despite seemingly a crucial character, he is rapidly written out at the moment where his interventions might have been most illuminating.
Much of the latter two-thirds of the film take place indoors or at night, reflecting the very dark psychological world of the film. Fuller’s company has poisoned people with its research. Gatz has a secret room straight out of a horror film. Playing to our sympathy, though, Gatz has been made a victim by his one-time babysitter, now a sheriff, Casey Boyd (Stavros Halkias). Boyd constantly is apologising to Gatz for some unspecified action in the past, that he now regrets. Rather like Gatz’ gestures towards Don’s self-image, Boyd seems to be trying to build a better relationship without really taking responsibility for whatever he has done.
And I think here we come to one of the two things that make this film better than the hosts of Michael & Us were willing to entertain. Will Tracy’s script is wrestling with the idea of responsibility. While we are busy doing one thing, we may be neglecting something more important. The experiments of Fuller’s company turn out to be an attempt to salve the consciences of Fuller and her associates for their past actions. Boyd and Gatz in turn take advantage of a weaker individual in a personal transaction. Gatz towards the end is told a lie. His preconceptions, having been affirmed, lead him to believe this new information because it fits his worldview. He can no longer test its truth. This blindness to the evidence of his senses has disastrous consequences for which he should only blame himself. BUGONIA asks the audience to question its own responsibility for the divisions and the abuses of nature that seem to be driving humanity towards extinction. In that way, it is something of a throwback to the films of nuclear war paranoia, which perhaps explains the closing sequence’s inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE.
The other of the two strengths is a revelation that can easily be dismissed as a cheap trick or deus ex machina solution to having been written into a corner. I don’t think it’s a particularly sophisticated gesture, but it still forces the audience either to reconsider all their prior judgements and expectations, or to ponder how their successful anticipation redefines their relationship to the characters of BUGONIA and to the global crises outside the cinema. Colony collapse disorder features prominently early on in the film. Imagine if you were a bee, trying to understand that. We don’t really know what they are thinking (and the scathing metaphor of ‘the hive mind’ suggests we wouldn’t take it seriously if we did). We can’t even explain it ourselves, although we have plenty of theories. Lanthimos raises the question of whether what is going on in the world today represents a human version of colony collapse disorder. I think without this cheap trick, the film would fail in this intent, because any other resolution would just have encourage us to carry on as we are.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
Mini Review: The real lesson of this film is that when you've written yourself into a corner, run into a closet to solve your problem. It's good. My full review tries to explain why.
More Reviews of Bugonia
titireviewer
Um conto sobre a destruição de um império desconstruído
Yorgos Lanthimos é um diretor que posso não ser tão fã mas reconheço seu talento, com uma direção que incomoda, mas d...
decatur555
Bugonia is a strange film, extremely strange, but also highly entertaining. From the beginning, it makes clear that it has no interest in resembling anything conventional. It mi...
Janomi
Bugonia was a fun and refreshingly original film. In an industry filled with sequels, remakes, and familiar formulas, I appreciated how willing it was to embrace its own strange...
AFlickering
lanthimos fleshes out the most undercooked story from KINDS OF KINDNESS into something that works much better dramatically, with plemons increasingly gesturing toward a vague ap...
moraesfelipe
Perhaps the most unimaginative cynical prestige film of this decade. It's just a bunch of self-glorified nothingness both in terms of characters -- they only exist as pumped up ...
See all 14 reviews of Bugonia
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