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

What Are Dreams?

Insightful Journey Into The Human Mind

       Slightly psychedelic while at the same time gripping and imaginative, Maniac is an insightful journey into multiple universes inside the human mind. With its dreamlike landscapes and impressive alternative realities, the series gives you something to think about while at the same time leaves a mark with its artistry.

    Owen and Annie meet during a trial phase of a revolutionary drug designed to eliminate depression and suffering from the entire human experience. The testing consists of 3 phases. The first one confronts the subjects with their most painful trauma. The second one exposes them to dreamlike realities, loosely based on their own lives. In the third stage, a powerful emotional transformation allows them to leave their suffering behind and move on. The plan sounds straightforward, but soon, unexpected complications appear, threatening the safety of the patients.

   The idea brings to mind similar concepts from Inception or The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. What are dreams and the realities we experience in them? Identifying them with something meaningful adds value to nearly 35% of our existence spent on sleeping. The characters find relief in their dreaming minds. When they, however, dismiss those experiences as unreal or trivial, their emotional pain comes back.

        The production also shows that one can be misdiagnosed with mental illness, carrying a heavy burden of alienation. Overconfidence in labelling patients with psychiatric conditions is downgrading and unjustified as we still have limited knowledge of the complexity of the human brain.

    

    In Maniac, visually suggestive worlds transform into exciting landscapes. The unfolding scenarios lead us in unpredictable directions. The title suggests drastic, heavy content, which is inaccurate for this intelligent and visionary production. Aside from the impressive leading characters played by Emma Stone (LaLaLand) and Jonah Hill (The Woolf of Wall Street), I was stunned by the performance of Sonoya Mizen in the role of Dr Fujita - the charismatic and formidable force pushing the experiment towards completion.

    

Agnes Prygiel, London 27.01.2022