Film Review: Bugonia (2025)

Film Review: Bugonia (2025)

When Paranoia Meets Corporate PR

Bugonia is a minimalist psychological puzzle that unfolds almost entirely within a single location. The premise is simple and absurd in equal measure: two environmental activists kidnap a high-ranking biotech CEO, convinced she is an alien responsible for ecological devastation — particularly the decline of bees. What follows is a tense, theatrical three-hander where certainty is in short supply and authority becomes a performance in its own right.

Emma Stone delivers a razor-sharp portrayal of the CEO, a woman so composed, so relentlessly professional, that even tied to a chair, she negotiates, reframes, redirects — as if being held hostage were just a difficult stakeholder meeting running behind schedule. 

The film’s real intrigue lies in how it plays with perspective. For most of its time, we’re left wondering:

Are these men deeply unwell, trapped in their own conspiracy?

Or is their prisoner indeed an alien?

Bugonia keeps both doors open, inviting the audience to question the characters’ sanity. It also shows how much power can be won through sheer entitlement.

Underlying all of this is a sharp environmental commentary. The film casually suggests that the actions of certain corporations are so destructive that they feel alien. The real horror, however, is that these harms are entirely human. In this sense, Bugonia becomes a fable about accountability and corporate detachment.

What remains unmistakable is the strength of the performances (Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis). With a tiny cast and a confined setting, the movie leans almost entirely on character work.

Bugonia is not an easy film to classify, but it is a compelling one: part thriller, part satire, part ecological parable. It invites viewers to examine the fine line between conviction and delusion — and to question who, in our current environmental moment, is truly behaving like an alien.

Agnes Prygiel

04.12.2025