Split Decision: "Bugonia"
Wednesday, March 11, 2026 at 7:00PM In the Split Decision series, our writers pair up and face off on an Oscar-nominated movie one loves and the other doesn't. Tonight, ERIC BLUME and CLÁUDIO ALVES discuss Bugonia...
ERIC: Cláudio, a friendship is nothing without honesty, so I'll honor our friendship by saying I've been putting off our conversation on Bugonia, because it's a film that brought me such perverse joy and basic movie-movie satisfaction...and I know you are not a big fan of Lanthimos' aesthetic and style, his partnership with Emma Stone, and some of Stone's key performances. They all mean a lot to me, so diving into this pit seems a bit challenging.
But what is the purpose of being a passionate cinephile if you can't dive into the pit, right? I'll start by saying that I think Bugonia is great, crazy, zany fun, and kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. That's just basic-level movie audience talk, but it's true, and I can't say that about a lot of movies, not even a few that I rank higher in my top ten list this year! Now, proceed, my friend.
CLÁUDIO: For the record, I'm not anti-Lanthimos nor am I anti-Stone…
I still feel their first collaboration represents the peak of each other's artistic journeys, but it's all been downhill from there. Progressively, the director's films have become more elaborate, inflated by Hollywood resources, prestige, and mayhap the will to please more mainstream audiences than would have endorsed his earlier creations. As for the actress, I'll be the first to praise her The Favourite turn and even defend what she's up to in the first two chapters of Kinds of Kindness. And yet, I can't help but see her as the weakest link in the Poor Things cast, or as a major problem at the heart of Bugonia. In a vacuum, her performance as an alien in a human disguise is good, even excellent, given her physical expressivity. In context, however, it's one among a litany of elements and pointed choices calibrated to make Bugonia easier to digest than the Korean film it's remaking, more appealing to the masses, much less prickly or discomforting, while pulling for some edgy nihilism that leaves me cold, like I've just been exposed to an angsty teen's blast of juvenile misanthropy. It's also way more conventional than what first attracted me to acting in Lanthimos' cinema, where anti-naturalism used to reign supreme.
Wait, let me go back a bit before I go too deep on stuff to discuss later.
You've expressed trepidation about arguing about a movie you love dearly, and I sympathize. So, let me extend an olive branch and mention a couple of things I'm happy to celebrate about Bugonia. That Jerskin Fendrix score is a dissonant delight, forceful in a way that reminded me of the barbed-wire texture of past Lanthimos. Even if less inspired, James Price's production design is pretty great, made possible by a studio budget and a director eager to see his vision put to screen without compromise. The same goes for the costumes, especially that floral number Jennifer Johnson picked for Stone's dinner with her captors. Finally, while I might be generally unimpressed by how the lead actors fit into the alchemy of Bugonia, Aidan Delbis made for a dazzling discovery, his disaffected delivery earning him easy MVP honors from yours truly.
ERIC: I always look for your singular takes...certainly you're the only person I've discussed Bugonia with who feels Delbis' acting is better than Plemons' and Stone's!
First, I should say I have not seen the original film upon which it's based, so I can't compare its easier-to-digested-ness factor, but I can't help but giggle at people who criticize Lanthimos as becoming "conventional". Obviously, as he's become more accessible than his early Dogtooth days, but I think he's retained an astonishing amount of technical daring, thematic bristliness, and bruising worldview that almost any other filmmaker would have shaved away completely. When I speak to the "average viewer," I am always surprised by how "out there" they find his films, so it's obviously all in the eye of the beholder. If Lanthimos wants to continue to get budgets for a film every year or other year, that's not going to happen without some sort of ability to "please more mainstream audiences." I suppose what you see as downhill, I view as an incredibly courageous tightrope act by a director with a very dark streak who has found a way to make films within the system without compromising who he is. I don't think a lot of people realize what a feat this is, particularly in this global film economy and just-barely-making-it state of the industry.
I know we disagree (perhaps strongly) on this, but I can think of no other director working today who has delivered six films in a row (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite, Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and this) as original, interesting, challenging, uncompromised, and beautiful. I can't believe the run he's having, and I really can't think of anyone else who has ever had a run like that, quite frankly. While you obviously disagree with my belief that those films are masterpieces or near-masterpieces, I think you can at least entertain that these are not schlock movies, nor something made for Hollywood executives, or for mass consumption. He's never been tempted to go the way of a Marvel movie or even a project not originating by himself. He makes me see the world in a specific way, which to me is the definition of art, and I think he's super special.
I do think his movies, as witnessed by the conversation we're already having, are truly a matter of taste. My olive branch to you on the movie is that I agree that Bugonia suffers from some "edgy nihilism"...or even from easy nihilism, and some dodgy editorializing on conspiracy theories and incels that is a bit troubling. I don't think Lanthimos thoroughly shapes all of his ideas in this film, and instead leans too easily on his natural instincts as a provocateur. That said, I love a provocation. The experience of watching this film is sometimes akin to being continuously jabbed with a needle by a nurse who cannot find your vein. And I'm not sure if Lanthimos ever finds that vein at the end of the day either... but I like the poking.
CLÁUDIO: You cannot think of anyone else who has EVER had a run like Lanthimos? Well, we really must agree to disagree because I could probably cite more than a hundred filmmakers who I think far outperform the Greek provocateur's inconsistent foray into English-language cinema in the last decade. I'm sorry, but that "ever" really fucks me up. I'd maybe accept it if we were talking about the last few years, but ever? What do you mean Lanthimos is having a better run than the likes of Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Ophüls, Sirk, all European Hollywood outsiders who delivered masterpiece after masterpiece when they made the transition, the Bugonia's auteur is attempting? Anyway, moving on.
I would challenge this assertion that he deserves automatic respect for trying to sell his provocateur schtick to Hollywood studios and their audiences. Especially because he keeps premiering his movies at places like the main competitions of Cannes and Venice, inviting us to consider these works in a group that also includes more overtly uncompromising artists like Park, Enyedi, Rosi, Gomes, Rasoulof, and Cronenberg, just to name a few, with whom Lanthimos has been programmed along with in the previous two seasons. If he and his producers want to be included in this conversation, they have to understand the expectations and direct comparisons that come with it. Get out of the kitchen if you can't handle the heat.
Or, if he insists on working within these Hollywood compromises, maybe try telling different stories. There's nothing more irritating than being confronted with art presenting itself as provocative, and the biggest provocation in evidence is the boredom it invokes. Not to mention that the far weirder Korean film had no such pretensions of arthouse importance. It's a seedy genre movie with wild ideas and wilder tonal shifts, rather than the American remake's funeral march prestige.
Bugonia is an incredibly safe movie when taken on the terms of its putative provocation and discernible aesthetic aims. Take Plemons, who is actively vile from the minute he shows up, so clearly performed and framed to be despised that one is never really conflicted about seeing the wrongness in his actions. Pardon the comparison to the original, but it was so much queasier to watch Save the Green Planet and realize I was kind of charmed and deeply sympathetic, even pitiful towards someone who, at the end of the day, is a serial torturer and murderer. Conversely, Lanthimos has dialed down the alien's venality, offering us a somewhat straightforward moral binary by the end of the movie. So much so that the final decision to destroy humanity is depicted in tragic tones, like a reluctant necessity, rather than the aggravating and deeply petty act of anger as is in the original. Because it's easier to swallow our end in such tonalities than to bristle with the gleeful nastiness the scenario could invite. A cosmic joke that may REALLY upset the general public is handled with comforting portentousness. Most of the adaptation choices are similarly aimed at softening the blow, making Bugonia more respectable, more somber and beautiful in appearance, yet less prone to inspire conflict in the viewer. To paraphrase Iman on Drag Race, it's so elegant as to be vulgar.
ERIC: I have never seen an episode of Drag Race, so I can't appreciate the reference!
I wrote that I can think of no other director working today who has had his incredible run. When I refer to "ever," I mean in my lifetime, or in the recent cinema past. Obviously, there are other directors from the over hundred years of cinema history who have had incredible runs, but this is a discourse on contemporary cinema, and I hold to the fact that in the last few decades, nobody has had their run. We can then agree to disagree.
I think that at the center of our argument is a chasm between "commercial" cinema and "independent" cinema. The "uncompromising artists" you mention simply do not get the distribution that Lanthimos' films get. That doesn't make either artist good nor bad, better nor worse. But the economics of how they get their films made, how often they get their films made, who sees their films, and who reacts to their films is truly apples and oranges. Within the current climate of films with wide distribution, Lanthimos is edgier, more uncompromising, and more "uncommercial" than almost anyone out there. I have colossal respect for all of the directors you mention, but on the other hand, none of their films have received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, and they are a different conversation. Nobody is better or worse, but these films are made for and received by different audiences. Comparing them feels uncomfortable and unfair to me. And I find the term "funeral march prestige" offensive... if you want to make a Hollywood "prestige" movie, you make Dances with Wolves, not Bugonia.
Again, I cannot speak to comparisons to Save the Green Planet. It may indeed be a much richer film. But the portrayal of Plemons, which was absolutely framed to be despised, set up for me an even more complex unraveling of my expectations. I was indeed poised by the creative team to "hate" him, and as his "craziness" seemed to sound less and less crazy as the movie goes on, I felt an uncorking of my personal prejudices and limitations on "people like that character" and indeed it confronts the very uncomfortable schism in the United States right now, how generic and simplistically we see our opposition at the moment. There are very few filmmakers hopping into this very loaded conversation in our country right now, for fear of being canceled or saying the wrong thing (I'm also a fan of another reviled film this year, After the Hunt, for attempting to do the same thing...come at me!). Bugonia is, on some level, a film dealing with American incel culture, which is alive and well and a festering sore on our country, and raises the hairs of every American in the audience.
I'll move from defensive to offensive. One of the things I love about Bugonia (and Lanthimos in general) is the comedy in it.
This is a movie about profoundly serious things, but I giggled throughout the entire film. This is where I feel Lanthimos' partnership with Stone pays colossal dividends. She's such a master at conceiving roles comically. She finds moments of glorious deadpan, where her frustration with her captors subsumes into patient logic and false generosity, and her intelligence is so deep and forthright that her transitions are wickedly comic. Even in its setups, the film has a great awareness of the comic potential: when the cop shows up at the house, you know he's going to get it. Anyone who has ever watched a movie knows he's going to get it. Lanthimos gives us those set-up cues we've seen a million times before, and they have a diabolical comic inevitability to them. We're in on the joke. Plemons' utter humorlessness is used to superb counterpoint effect to Stone's funny savagery. Their duet was sublime to me.
CLÁUDIO: This is not a dichotomy between independent cinema (good) and commercial cinema (bad). Because the Warner Bros-produced One Battle After Another made four times over what Bugonia did at the box office, and it's both funnier and gutsier in nearly every regard. Avatar: Fire and Ash is as mainstream as they come, and I find its declarative stance that peaceful resistance is ineffective and that the only solution to a colonial force is the killing of colonizers (with warrior squids, yay) rather than some half-measured coexistence to be rare in Hollywood history. In its linking of the Black communities' embrace of Christianity to a dereliction of more ancient values and the welcoming of white oppression, Sinners is putting forward a much pricklier and more provocative argument than anything Bugonia has to say about capitalism, conspiracy theories, or incel culture. As far as form is concerned, Bugonia is practically classicist in its audiovisual strategies when compared to something like 28 Years Later. And yes, for all that it fails in various avenues, After the Hunt is bolder than Bugonia.
You say that Hollywood prestige is Dances with Wolves, but that feels like an outdated reference when we're living in a world where Anora won the Best Picture Oscar a year ago. Such concepts are not defined by what they were 35 years ago, but by what earns artists prestige in the current industry and media climate. So yes, Bugonia is a Hollywood studio prestige picture, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
And, honestly, if he truly is not compromised by a need for Hollywood stars and Hollywood budgets, Yorgos Lanthimos' latest effort is still a picture of disappointments. What it has to say about important subjects is puddle-deep, ideas that present themselves as grotesquely as possible within multiplex standards to appear transgressive without ever threatening the status quo. And I think that extends to the comedy you see as one of Bugonia's major strengths. Humor is subjective, but I didn't find this especially funny.
I'll grant you that Stone's physicality is excellent, as I’ve said before, especially in the final act, when she must negotiate between Michelle's brutalized body and the need to move fast, to pretend everything is fine when it's as far from that as is conceivable. Yet, the back-and-forth between Plemons and Stone never feels especially rich in comedic rhythm to me. Pardon the constant comparison to Save the Green Planet, but in the changes, one can denote artistic intent. The long, explanatory monologue about what's really going on was paired with an outright Kubrick parody spoof in the original film. In Bugonia, it's a showcase moment for the actors, drained of silliness so it can better serve as a dramatic anchor. This same thing happens across the movie, where everything wild in the original has been tamed and varnished with a thick layer of seriousness.
But you haven't seen Save the Green Planet, so that comparison is a bit unfair to bring into this convo. Since you're a Lanthimos fan, let me appeal to his pre-Stone cinema as a point of reference.
Going back to an earlier notion, I maintain that one of the things that used to fascinate me about the Greek auteur was how he directed his actors toward unashamed anti-naturalism. I believe I once described his casts as aliens in people costumes trying to play humans, though they've only learned about humanity from second-hand sources. Even the cadence of dialogue was a curiosity, and sight lines were often misaligned, twisting something like Killing of the Sacred Deer into an exercise in behavioral asynchronicity. Comparing what Plemons and Stone are doing here to Farrell and Kidman in that film, to say nothing of Lanthimos' earlier Greek actors, it's difficult for me not to be staggered by the conventionalism of their strategies. How odd, then, that the one time Lanthimos is dramatizing an actual alien, she acts the closest any of his protagonists ever did to the standard lead in any other American drama. Don't get me wrong, by themselves, these are technically meticulous performances, full of shadings and little details of modulated inflection that let us access these folks' interiorities. But in the context of this story, in the context of Lanthimos' filmography, I can't help but find them all wrong and unfunny. Worse, they're banal.
ERIC: Sounds like we are divided on many, many basic definitions across the board. I equivocate Hollywood studio prestige picture with Oscar-bait movie. And I strongly disagree with the examples you use, "having more to say" than Bugonia. And our disparate reactions to the comedy in the film speak to how subjective comedy is.
I guess this is just one big disagreement! Let's see what our readers say in the comments below?
CLÁUDIO: This is a good moment to wrap up as any. We’re running out of time before Oscar night comes for us all, so let’s get to it. Thank you for a lively debate, Eric. Maybe the only total disagreement in a season of Split Decisions where mild differences in opinion represent most of the team’s conflicting takes. I guess that highlights the general quality of AMPAS’ picks. Oh well, can’t really complain about that. Now, readers, please sound off in the comments.
Previous Split Decisions:
- F1, with Nathaniel R and Ben Miller
- TRAIN DREAMS, with Juan Carlos Ojano and Cláudio Alves
- BLUE MOON, with Cláudio Alves and Nick Taylor
Related Oscar Pages:
Reader Comments (2)
How about judge the film by what it IS and not what it's NOT! So many unproductive comparisons here -- BUGONIA isn't as subversive as "X" is not good criticism!
And no mention of Robbie Ryan's spectacular cinematography?? Better VistaVision than OBAA!!
I think Stone is giving her best performance in one of his movies here,I never l cared for her turn in The Favourite and think the praise for her Oscar winning role in Poor things was slightly overdone but we shouldn't take her for granted,she's is taking some Kidman level risks.
Her best performance imo humble one is still Battle of the Sexes and i wish she'd step out of the weirdness just for a couple of films,let's see a more natural grounded person from her next time out and if he's going to cast Alicia give her lots more to do,I think she'd have been great and surprising in Emma's part.
I thought the cinematography too gaudy.
Delbis was the heart of the film,I was bothered when his charater left the film.
I don't think the ending works at all.
Plemons was good but I wouldn't nominate him