When the bees mourn – In Yorgos Lanthimos' “Bugonia” aliens not only endanger the honey supply

Yorgos Lanthimos' new film "Bugonia" begins unusually idyllic, with a sun-drenched flower meadow where buzzing bees busily gather their nectar. Not much longer, as Teddy (Jesse Plemons) knows, whose voiceover discusses the decline of bees and a phenomenon known as "Collective Colony Disorder." In this disorder, all flightless worker bees leave the hive. The queen is left alone with the brood, leading to the extinction of the colony.

Teddy is a beekeeper. He knows his stuff and has also done his own research: online, in podcasts, in the echo chambers of social media. And he is certain that the decline of bees is only the beginning of a process that will lead to the end of humanity.

But in his view, it's not humans who are destroying bees, nature, and thus the very foundation of their own existence. No, it's aliens from the neighboring Andromeda galaxy who are unnoticed and systematically driving the extermination of humanity. Extraterrestrial saboteurs in human form already live among us.

And Teddy thinks he has found one of them: Michelle (Emma Stone), CEO of a nearby pharmaceutical company, whose face is omnipresent on the covers of business magazines.

Indeed, this woman seems to have acquired supernatural leadership qualities. Her day begins at 4:30 a.m. with a morning run and martial arts training. Afterward, she speeds to the company headquarters in her large SUV, where she has sworn the employees to a corporate philosophy that effectively conceals the maximum exploitation of the workforce through team-building and diversity programs. Michelle is a seasoned career woman who will stop at nothing for the company's profits and who also provides the PR strategy for it.

Teddy's mother (Alicia Silverstone) is one of their victims. She volunteered to be a test subject for a drug that was supposed to cure her of her opiate addiction and has been in a permanent coma ever since. Together with his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy plans to abduct the supposed alien. Not out of personal revenge, as he emphasizes, but to negotiate with the ruler of Andromeda and save humanity from certain doom.

To avoid being distracted from their mission by carnal desires, the two even sterilized themselves with a chemical cocktail. Naturally, Michelle fights back against the clumsy idiots tooth and nail. Lanthimos and his cameraman Robbie Ryan depict their capture from a distanced perspective as a grotesque slapstick interlude.

Eventually, the amateur kidnappers manage to anesthetize their hostage. The hair, which the alien could use to communicate with the mothership, is shaved off. Her face and body are embalmed with an antihistamine cream to dull the alien's supernatural abilities. And so, Michelle wakes up in the hostage takers' basement, her arms and legs bound.

She doesn't doubt her superiority for a second and immediately begins negotiations for her release.

With his characteristic dazzling cynicism, Lanthimos stages the rhetorical battles between the tough businesswoman and the crazy conspiracy theorist to make the scenario increasingly darker (which also includes an unnecessary torture sequence).

The sympathy and antipathy toward the characters are evenly distributed. Emma Stone is simply brilliant as the ice-cold company boss for whom giving up is not an option. Plemons, on the other hand, portrays his character not as a simple-minded nerd, but as a sensitive prophet of doom who has walled himself into his own coherent system of thought.

"Bugonia" is a remake of Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 Korean film "Save the Green Planet." The story was completely reworked by screenwriter Will Tracy ("The Menu," "Succession"). The film lacks the exuberant, creative drive that characterized Lanthinos' masterpiece "Poor Things" (2023), and, as a chamber drama set in the hostage takers' basement, it certainly develops some lengthy stretches.

But with its juxtaposition of conspiracy theories and supple capitalism, the film certainly keeps its finger on the pulse of the times—only to then unsettle all certainties. Because a director like Lanthimos always has an ace up his sleeve. Here, he offers a surprising finale, in which he unleashes the full range of his grotesque creative will, and a morbid, poetic coda that will etch itself in the cinematic memory.

“Bugonia” Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, with Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, 120 minutes, FSK 16 (Theatrical release on October 30)