Bugonia, directed by Yurgos (Poor Things/The Lobster) Lanthimos and scripted by Will Tracy (former editor of The Onion), is a remake of Save the Green Planet!, a South Korean flick I haven't seen (though would like to), but I've seen several other movies to which this update can be compared: K-Pax, Simon, Conspiracy Theory, Frailty, The Skin I Live In, Under the Skin, Perfect Skin, Tattoo, The Collector 1965, Companion, The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976, 12 Monkeys and last but not least, They Live.
The story follows two guys who believe a pharmaceutical CEO is a devious, queen-bee alien, an Andromedan to be precise, who must be contained to prevent Earth's population from being destroyed, altered, corralled, weakened or whatever the Andromedans wish to do with it. Oh, and the scheme links to bees, in regard to the colony-extinction claim, as well as the resurrection mythology from which the term "bugonia" stems. At any rate, despite her martial-arts prowess, the suspected extraterrestrial is kidnapped and as expected, plots to escape.
Emma (Zombieland/Spider-man/Birdman) Stone plays the lofty kidnappee, Michelle Fuller, who seems smug and faux (like a lot of high-ranking cretins so many of us have had the displeasure to know), which contrasts with the affable guys who snatch her. Jesse (Breaking Bad/El Camino) Plemons' Teddy Gatz and his impressionable, child-like cousin, Adien Delbis' Don, are quite sincere in their motives, but more so, comical in how they enact them, at one desperate point even resorting to chemical castration to avoid Michelle's alleged, penchant for seduction. (Alicia Silverstone's Sandy, Teddy's mom, manifests in creepy, black-and-white flashbacks, and Stavros Halkias' Sheriff Casey lends much to the awkward, investigational margins, by more than implying he long ago molested Teddy.)
Stone, it should be stressed, is fascinating as hell to watch, especially after Don shaves her head (that's because Andromedans converse with one another through their telecommunicating strands). Stone's creamy, skull-ish face and vampiric expressions do, in fact, invoke something beyond this world, but is she?
The big revelation does come, and it shows the extent to which a devoted cause (a conspiracy theory) can drive folks to the edge, no matter how far-fetched the content. In this case, the cause's tendrils just so happen to reach into science fiction (i.e. the evolutionary, Erich von Daniken-derived stuff, complemented by Jerskin Fendrix's on-target, old-school score), which gives Bugonia an air of go-with-the-flow believability.
Nevertheless, the movie is quirky and on that basis, won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for those seeking common ingredients tossed into a fresh recipe (and that means with heaps of buggy gobbledygook layered on), Bugonia should hit it outta the park. If hooked, it'll be hard not to see it again and perhaps a few times well after that. Say, maybe Bugonia is one of those offbeat rarities destined for cult relegation. Ah, too bad midnight shows are no longer en vogue. This one would have been ideal for that.
