Film Review: Bugonia

4 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | Feb. 7, 2026

Yorgos Lanthimos could be described as more of a state of mind than a director. The creative visionary behind Dogtooth, The Lobster, and Poor Things to name just a few, Lanthimos doesn’t so much take you on cinematic journeys as much as he takes you on moving-image acid trips. His now signature style of cerebral stories with eccentric and often dazzling performances continues with Bugonia, a psychological thriller with a sci-fi twist that has four upcoming chances to win an Oscar.

Most notably, Bugonia is nominated for Best Picture of the Year, and is in my opinion the most uniquely weird of the bunch. Also notable is the Academy’s absence of a Best Director honor to Lanthimos (he’s been nominated twice before), reflecting perhaps a mixed/positive response to the Hollywood outsider from Greece.

Bugonia makes its dreamy tone known from the get-go, so you need to settle in early and allow the world of the story to reveal itself bit by bit. For most of the remarkably simple plot, the film will feel very familiar as it follows a classic “hostage film” narrative from beginning to end in the same vein as Silence of the Lambs or Misery.

The kidnapper is a greasy social outsider named Teddy, played with a creepy savant edge by Jessie Plemons as a painfully-precise conspiracy theorist who comes to believe nature’s imbalances have been caused by forces only he can stop. Recruited reluctantly into his madness is simpleton Don (played beautifully by Aidan Delbis), Teddy’s cousin, who is along for the ride and a sidekick for Teddy’s rants and raves, even if he can’t quite understand them.

The prisoner of these hijinks is pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller, played by Emma Stone with the same brave fierceness she’s brought to other Lanthimos’ films (this is their fifth collaboration). Her portrayal of the not-helpless-at-all victim who uses all her skills to extract herself is biting, unpredictable, and sometimes riveting. Stone has already won two acting Oscars, and with Bugonia she has earned another deserving nomination.

There’s a certain Sigourney Weaver “Ripley on Ambien” vibe to Stone’s performance, and a milder Of Mice and Men chillness to the hijackers. That simmering tension in the film’s center can drag on a bit when you don’t yet understand the character vendettas or how dense they will become.

Most dramatic are the music cues and score from composer Jerskin Fendrix, another of the film’s Oscar nominees.

But Lanthimos and screenwriter Will Tracy bring the drama back big time in the final act for a symphony of bizarre twists and turns I should not reveal. It all explodes into a final sequence that is impossible not to be mesmerized by, but also makes you feel as if you don’t really know what happened either. Perhaps that lonely confusion is the point?

Such is the delight and provocation of the work—a treatise on social power struggles, our place in the universe, our animal nature, and the impossible powers of minds that not even AI can understand. Despite its name, Bugonia is a clever profile of we humans in both our bravado and insignificance.

Rated R mainly for some bloody violence, the film runs 1 hour 57 minutes and is widely available to stream or rent online.