A basement standoff with big ideas

“Bugonia,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest, strips down his familiar surrealism into a claustrophobic, real-world chamber piece. The story centers on Teddy, an incel eco-terrorist, and his cousin Donny, who kidnap Michelle, a pharma executive they believe is an alien infiltrator. Most of the film unfolds in a basement—talk, manipulation, small torments—and the austerity sharpens the satire. It riffs on conspiracy culture, corporate harm, and the urge to sort chaos into cosmic plots. The writing—by Will Tracy of “The Menu” and “Succession”—uses sharp reversals and brutal deadpan to keep the stakes human even as the theories turn cosmic.

Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons meet in a style duel: she plays steady, strategic and chilly; he is fervent, wounded, and convinced he’s decoding signals. The camera lingers on the power shift: who owns the narrative, who is performing persuasion, who is simply surviving. When violence breaks the talk, it lands harder because the film has taught you to listen.

Why this one lingers

Lanthimos has often built dollhouses for human cruelty; here the walls feel closer. The middle act sags slightly, a hazard of talk-heavy thrillers, but the finale delivers a disturbingly tidy conclusion that reframes the basement as a losing bunker. The R-rating fits—there are grisly images—but the shock works in service of the ideas. It’s also a sly adaptation, nodding to the 2003 Korean cult film that inspired it without quotation-mark homage. Awards-season math aside, “Bugonia” is engineered for post-screening arguments: about radicalization bubbles, about corporate alibis, about whether empathy can survive in closed rooms. Expect strong legs with adult audiences who want something tense, topical, and meanly funny—plus sturdy acting showcases for two performers at the top of their powers.