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 Lanthimos' 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 (9)
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
Wae Mest -- Contextualizing a film within a filmmaker's work and the texts it's drawing from feels like a valid approach to criticizing it. But fine, beyond comparison, taken on its own, I found BUGONIA a work of juvenile misanthropy with little tonal variation, stabs at political commentary that say very little and mostly preach to the choir, and mismatched performance styles that often don't seem coherent with the formal framing in which they are presented. I personally prefer how OBAA uses VistaVision, with deep staging and other classicist techniques. Still, I am hardly a fan of the shallow-focus portraiture that has besotted Lanthimos and Robbie Ryan, so this is really a matter of taste. I do love the colors of BUGONIA, though. And the music. And, to a lesser extent, Delbis. Also, for the record, I didn't even pull the most vexing comparison that completely took me out of the film, which was Lanthimos cribbing from Tarkovsky's ZERKALO with as little grace as the likes of Iñarritu.
Mr Ripley79 -- I agree Stone is taking risks, but I can't help but wish she were building as enviable and varied an auteur portfolio as Kidman. By the time she was Stone's present age, Kidman had already worked with Campion, Kubrick, Luhrmann, Van Sant, Von Trier and Glazer, just to name a few, all in a variety of widely different registers. In any case, I also love Stone in BATTLE OF THE SEXES, though I wouldn't rank her work there at the top of a career-wide assessment. I struggle with the ending to BUGONIA, too, though it's one of the instances where Lanthimos goes for laughs in an obvious way, with his framing gawking at naked bodies in awkward, compromising positions, etc. As with many parts of this film, I somewhat appreciate the intention I imagine is behind the whole thing, but I loathe the execution.
Honestly, as much as I am arguing in the comments, I do like to read dissenting perspectives here. It's what the Split Decision series is all about. Keep 'em coming.
Haven't seen the original, but my feelings on the film are the same as my thoughts on POOR THINGS. Both films wear a veneer of provocation but actually have a safe foundation, exposing their hollowness (or perhaps, the unwillingness to go deeper).
Juan Carlos Ojano -- Nice to see us agree on a film after our TRAIN DREAMS split decision!
Loved Bugonia, was iffy on Poor Things, but I have to say, I get a kick out of the fact that THIS GUY (as well as someone like Del Toro) are Academy favorites these days.
We have both the most interesting Academy membership since the '70s, and also the total absence of middlebrow entertainment, so something this bizarre and nihilistic can be essentially rubber-stamped.
I like that Bugonia knows it's a B-movie. It seems only interested in telling a sensational story in a slightly camp way. To me that's a vast improvement over Poor Things, even if his treatment of Stone as a rag doll for degradation and abuse isn't much better here.
This is an interesting conversation but I also feel like it's weirdly non-contextual while trying to provide context. So many comparisons to other cinemas and I'm wondering if that's useful. I just don't think Lanthimos is all that comparable to others. He's clearly an auteur in the traditional sense in that it's always recognizable as *his* -- even, yes, if it's a remake or when he shows influences. The comparisons to his own cinema are totally fair of course.
But what threw me is the argument that Sinners is provocative and holding that up somehow as moreso than Bugonia. I'M BAFFLED. I didn't find that it had *any* discomfitting ideas -- I'm not saying I didn't like it (it's great mainstream entertainment) but it was hardly saying anything you dont hear in general popular conversations about race, history, and cultural appropriation. I found Nick Davis' review far more thought-provoking than Sinners itself (he wasnt a fan) about the way that Sinners fail to actually provoke or challenge you (though it appears to have the ambitions to do so.)
One thing that has surprised me about the BUGONIA takes (pro and con) over the past few months is that every single one takes the movies plot entirely literally... despite the outlandishnesses or anti-naturalism (to use Claudio's term which I think does very much apply to this movie...if not as forcefully as other Lanthimos pictures, like say, The Lobster) within some of the sequences. I think the movie is far more fascinating if you allow in the idea that the ending might not be literal but kind of stockholm syndrome run amok...what if the last 10 minutes (everything from the explosion onward) is essentially Michelle having a psychotic break after all the trauma. Holding both ideas in your head during the finale is a really fascinating exercize in movie watching. I think the movie works either way but claiming that it's naturalistic or mainstream in its execution is... well... I don't get that claim at all, so I'll have agree to disagree.
Sorry Claudio I know you'll take this as blasphemy but for me it's like The Secret Agent in that it's smack dab in the middle of a strong Best Picture list (well 8 out of 10 strong) in that some of its best moments are incredible and the central performance is exciting and the ideas are compelling... but i also found both uneven and questioned a few of the choices.
Mike in Canada -- Even if I don't like BUGONIA or FRANKENSTEIN, I do agree with this sentiment. Expanding the voting body to include more international artists has been a good move by the Academy.
DK -- Sometimes, I wish I didn't do my homework because SAVE THE GREEN PLANET is an actual B-movie in a genre model, and every change made to it just feels like a move away from that milieu in a way that annoys me.
NATHANIEL R -- When discussing adaptations, I'm sorry, but I'll always think it's fair to look at the source material and discern what the artist adapting the work has chosen to preserve, change, erase, highlight, etc. Also, Lanthimos emerged within a national movement in the context of other artists, the Greek New Wave (I didn't even go there in this discussion because I assume most people won't have much awareness of this particular wave beyond Lanthimos and maybe Tsangari), so his cinema has always been contextualized within a broader spectrum than just his own work. I understand if others don't find that useful, but I do, both in my writing and my reading of others' takes on these films.
I agree with a lot of that Nick Davis review - hell, I sit at a three-star letterboxd rating with SINNERS - but I do find its ideas on Christianity within the Black American community to be thought-provoking, as it's very rare in the mainstream to see such an outright connection between Christianity, even specific forms of Black Evangelical Christian practice, and a perpetuation of Black subjugation. The way the vampires outside sing hymns almost as a threat is a fascinating touch, for instance. And I find that more daring than showing incels as grotesque, late-stage capitalists as manipulative, conspiracy theories running amok, and isolated guys latching on to them to make themselves feel important - which, as I said in this debate, just feels like preaching to the choir. Writing by many Black critics who actually dissect the film has been useful in this regard, too, which I must admit.
No offense taken nor blasphemy, Nat. We have very different tastes and look for different things in cinema. I was never expecting you to fall head over heels for THE SECRET AGENT, especially when it's so long and has such a deliberately meandering structure - I still remember your issues with DRIVE MY CAR's running time and driving scenes, for instance! I plan to post my ideal Oscar ballot like last year, and you'll see we have very little overlap, which is honestly exciting for the site, I feel. All good :)