ADAPTING Jang Joon-hwan’s 2005 South Korean dark comedy, Save the Green Planet!, for a contemporary American audience, director Yorgos Lanthimos continues his recent barrage of films. Poor Things in 2023, Kinds of Kindness in 2024, and Bugonia in 2025 is a level of output few directors can match. With that said, neither the critically acclaimed Poor Things or the generally well-reviewed Kinds of Kindness resonated with me quite like his earlier works, such as The Favourite or The Killing of a Sacred Deer. So the question is, does Lanthimos’ trademark off-kilter and often unsettling filmmaking approach do justice to the truly absurd South Korean cult classic, or does Bugonia find itself in the shadows of Lanthimos’ more celebrated works?

Bugonia follows our two protagonists, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis), as they kidnap and torture Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), a high-powered female CEO. They operate under the belief that Michelle is not just a cold and calculating corporate elite, but that she is actually an alien from Andromeda intent on destroying the Earth. Her and her brethren supposedly brainwash the masses, manipulate individuals through their baser instincts, and wage ecological warfare through honey bee colony collapse disorder (CCD). In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, Bugonia takes aim at the seemingly ever growing and prominent class divide in modern society. The twist, of course, is that those “elites” might really be from another world.

As you might imagine, two conspiracy obsessed recluses attempting to torture a “confession” from a corporate executive inevitably results in a tug-of-war, where each side attempts to present their case. This back and forth is where Bugonia predictably has the most to say. On one hand you have the elites, overworking and exploiting their historically obedient and dutiful worker bees, and on the other hand you have the abused working class, who realize something is wrong, but resort to the most farcical of conspiracies to explain their suffering. Regardless of who you sympathize with, when these two groups sit down at the proverbial and quite literal kitchen table, conversation grinds to a halt. One side sees the other as predestined losers and the other quite literally fails to see the humanity in their opposition. Instead of finding common ground, corporate jargon and hallucinatory ramblings fly back and forth. Progress stalls, the queen languishes, and the worker bees fall further into disillusionment. The colony teeters on collapse.

While the opening act does a commendable job of introducing us to our outlandish cast of characters, and the last third truly goes off the rails in the most delightful ways (including a gratifyingly poignant conclusion), the core of the film does wear on. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons deliver the performances required for such a dialogue heavy film, but Lanthimos leans too much on repetition. Seemingly in an effort to retain some of the pure zaniness of the original South Korean outing, the film repeats jokes (usually with Don, to poor effect) to fill space while the second act takes its time to dryly move the narrative along. While a certain level of deadpan is expected in a Lanthimos production (and by certain level, I mean a tremendous amount), he fails to find the right cadence in Bugonia.

With Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos sets out to remake one of South Korea’s true dark comedy cult classics, Save the Green Planet!. On nearly every technical level, Lanthimos succeeds. And even beyond the craft, Bugonia delivers its message in a much more impactful and timely manner. It thoroughly explores the unending conflict between queens and worker bees, and doesn’t stop at simply noting that the social contract between the two has deteriorated. It casts aside the notion that the colony is failing for mysterious, unexplainable reasons, but instead asserts that no one has any realistic interest in saving the hive. While some second act pacing issues hold it back, and Don could probably use another re-write, Bugonia is another strong entry in Lanthimos’ rapidly growing catalogue.