Bugonia Review: Emma Stone’s Perfect Directing Partner—Here’s to Their Endless Collaborations
Emma Stone’s extraordinary ascent over the past twenty years has been a joy to behold. Breaking through as the standout romantic lead in the male-driven comedy Superbad (2007), she captured hearts opposite Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. Her sparkling turn in Easy A (2010) solidified her as a rising star, and although even the finest actors have their missteps, Stone’s radiant performance in La La Land (2016) confirmed her A-list status. Yet it is her daring collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos that have propelled her into an entirely new realm.
Bugonia
- Release Date: October 24, 2025 (limited); October 31, 2025 (wide)
- Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
- Writer: Will Tracy
- Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone
- Rating: R – bloody violence, suicidal content, graphic imagery, strong language
- Runtime: 118 minutes
The creative partnership behind The Favourite, Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness ranks among the most compelling in contemporary cinema. Lanthimos continually challenges Stone to broaden her range, and while Bugonia may not eclipse the heights of their darkly comic spin on Frankenstein in Poor Things (2023), it remains a striking showcase for their talents. Despite a few narrative wrinkles, the film pulses with the same razor-sharp wit and absurdity that have become their hallmark.
Adapted from Jang Joon-hwan’s cult 2003 South Korean thriller Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia reunites Lanthimos with frequent collaborator Jesse Plemons, here portraying Teddy Gatz. Convinced that a clandestine alien race known as Andromedans manipulates humanity, Teddy enlists his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) in a daring scheme: to kidnap biotech magnate Michelle Fuller (Stone), whom he believes will broker an audience with the extraterrestrial emperor.
Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis radiate electric chemistry
Plemons anchors the film with a potent blend of desperation and zealotry, channeling Teddy’s grief into a fervent obsession. His portrayal is at once unsettling and captivating—part rueful dreamer, part impassioned evangelist. Opposite him, Delbis emerges as a remarkable screen presence in his feature debut. As Don, his wide-eyed innocence and moral unease mirror the audience’s skepticism, yet his loyalty to Teddy lends the narrative a haunting poignancy.
Emma Stone delivers a powerhouse performance
Stone transforms herself into Michelle Fuller with feral intensity. Shorn of her hair and smeared in therapeutic ointment, she inhabits a grim, basement-bound cage, yet radiates an unbreakable defiance. From meticulously choreographed morning rituals to a chilling boardroom-style monologue confronting her captors, Stone wields her intelligence and wit like weapons, turning each conversation into a battle of wits.
Strengths and flaws in equal measure
Visually, Bugonia thrives on Lanthimos’s signature blend of stark compositions and surreal interludes—flashbacks in monochrome, flat-Earth countdowns to the next lunar eclipse, and close-up portraits that feel almost forensic. Yet the third act’s predictable twists slightly diminish the film’s thematic resonance, tempering what could have been an even more potent critique of our internet-addled realities.
Releasing just in time for Halloween, Bugonia remains a must-see for cinephiles drawn to offbeat dark comedies. Though not the duo’s crowning achievement, it serves as yet another testament to Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos’s enduring creative synergy—and their shared gift for turning the bizarre into something deeply human.
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