Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone
Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet! was part of that Millennial wave of East Asian genre movies that developed cult followings among western audiences. Many of those films received inevitable, and inevitably disappointing, Hollywood remakes, and now two decades later Jang's film receives am English language remake from an unlikely source: the Greek absurdist auteur Yorgos Lanthimos. Stepping in late when Jang himself was removed from this project, Lanthimos might be considered a director for hire for the first time in his fiercely independent career. But there's enough of Lanthimos's trademark absurdism to please his fans, while the film's fealty to a prior source makes it arguably his most accessible work to date.
Lanthimos's current muse Emma Stone plays Michelle, the CEO of a pharmaceutical firm whose experimental drug treatments have left several test patients in comas. One such victim is Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), whose son, Teddy (Jesse Plemons), blames Michelle for his mother's state. He also believes Michelle is a member of an alien race called "the Andromedans," and that his mother is a victim of their experiments on human subjects. With the aid of his intellectually challenged cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy abducts Michelle and attempts to force her to admit her true identity. He is convinced that her race is set to arrive in three days' time under cover of a lunar eclipse, and he wants to be taken aboard to negotiate a truce between Earth and Andromeda.
Swapping the original's male kidnapping victim for an attractive young woman might have resulted in this remake having an uncomfortable undercurrent. After all, this is now a tale of two creepy men chaining a woman in their basement and covering her body in lotion. But Bugonia makes it clear early on that Teddy is focussed solely on exposing an alien conspiracy. So much so that he goes so far as to chemically castrate himself and Don, lest any lustful feelings get in the way of his single-minded mission. Lanthimos has removed much of the goofiness of the Korean original, making Teddy a far scarier presence than the hapless version of the character in Jang's version.
The Korean movie came at a time when conspiracy theorists were still considered harmless cranks who had watched too many episodes of The X-Files. Bugonia arrives in a post-COVID world where conspiracies now have real world implications. Most of us know someone who went down an online rabbit hole while stuck at home and emerged with dangerous and contrarian theories, many rooted in classic anti-semitic ideas about a cabal of elites controlling the world. Teddy is now all too recognisable, and instantly despicable. We relate with Michelle's inability to talk sense with this loon, but at the same time Michelle is a monster, regardless of whether she's a human or an alien (had Teddy been played by Jacob Elordi rather than Plemons, he might be viewed by some as a romantic Luigi Mangione figure). What's frustrating about today's conspiracy cranks is that they deny the actual tangible threats of the modern world, caring more about the effects of 5G than boiling oceans. This is represented here by podcaster Stavros Halkias in the role of Casey, a police officer obsessed with seeking forgiveness for some disturbing act he committed while babysitting Teddy as a teen. Whether Casey is sincere or simply worried about becoming MeToo'd, Teddy is so consumed by his theory of alien invasion that he has no interest in holding Casey accountable for his undeniable crimes.
Both Bugonia and its Korean predecessor belong to a dramatic tradition that includes films like Polanski's Death and the Maiden, a pair of 1971 thrillers both named Revenge, Villeneuve's Prisoners and this years' Palme d'Or Winner It Was Just an Accident. All of these movies share the same central premise of a protagonist abducting someone they believe is responsible for some terrible act, and it's left to the audience to decide whether they've made a mistake or not. The trouble with this format is that it limits itself to one of two endings: the protagonist is either vindicated or not. This narrative isn't particularly compelling, so these movies generally live or die on the strength of their performances. Bugonia is no different. Stone and Plemons have evolved into two of America's most interesting actors in recent years, and it's their sparring that keeps us gripped throughout Lanthimos's film. Teddy certainly seems like a nutjob, but Plemons plays the role with a level of sincerity that convinces us he genuinely believes his wild claims. Similarly, Stone's performance keeps us guessing. With her shaved head (Teddy believes the Andromedans use their hair to communicate with each other), Stone has the appearance of Alice Krige's Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact, and the way her eyes study her kidnappers suggests a mix of fascination and contempt for a lower life form.
Despite most of the narrative playing out in a basement, Bugonia might be Lanthimos's best looking film. Like One Battle After Another, it employs the defunct VistaVision format, not to capture grand landscapes but to fill the screen with two fascinating faces in Stone and Plemons. Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan conjure some of the most arresting close-ups you'll see outside of Kubrick.
As compelling as its central performances and cinematography are, Bugonia can't help but feel derivative, not simply as a remake but as the latest example of an over-used dramatic conceit. It may be the best looking and most well-acted of Lanthimos's films, but it's also the most narratively constrained, and it's notably lacking the unpredictability and hyper-absurdism of his best work.
Bugonia is in UK/ROI cinemas from October 31st.
