Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film “Bugonia”, the American remake of South Korean cult film “Save the Green Planet!” (2003), is as nasty and clinical as you can expect from his work. While trying to push its darkly absurd story premise as much as possible, the movie often jolts or shocks us with a fair share of disturbing violence and barbarity, and it is surely another deeply uncomfortable but undeniably distinctive genre piece from Lanthimos.

Right from the beginning, the movie does not hide at all how unhinged and unstable its hero is. Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) is a young beekeeper who is also your average conspiracy theory-obsessed paranoid, and the opening part shows him planning a kidnapping plan along with his intellectually-disabled cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Their target is the female CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, and Gatz has strongly believed that this figure is actually an alien in disguise.

After she is eventually kidnapped and then taken to the basement of Gatz’s house, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) soon comes to realize how impossible her situation is. No matter how much she tries to convince Gatz that she is not an alien, Gatz is quite adamant in his loony conviction, and their first conversation is naturally going nowhere, while Don becomes more uncomfortable about what is going on between his cousin and Fuller. He sincerely wants to help his cousin as much as possible, but he is still not so sure about whether his cousin is really right about Fuller.

As Gatz goes further with his crazy plan, the movie delivers a number of darkly absurd moments which are also very unnerving. For example, he gets Fuller’s head shaved just because he thinks her alien race can transmit signals via hair. In addition, he also has her body constantly covered with hand cream for lessening her psychic power somehow, and that surely makes her look as white and pale as the vampires in those Twilight flicks.

This is not so far from William Wyler’s classic thriller film “The Collector” (1965) and many other similar flicks out there, but Lanthimos and screenplay writer Will Tracy try to dial down the sexually disturbing aspects of the story setting as much as possible, and they did that with some extra black humor. Sure, it is not so pleasant to watch a woman held in captivity by two men, but Tracy’s screenplay blocks any possibility of sexual tension between Gatz and Fuller right from the start in a rather amusing way. In addition, the situation becomes more ambiguous as there comes some reasonable doubt on whether Gatz is really wrong about Fuller’s identity.

And the movie also lets us sense more of how pathetic and desperate its hero really is. He does reveal a lot about himself, but it is apparent that Gatz’s life has been quite unhappy and miserable for years, and we are not so surprised when it is revealed later that kidnapping Fuller is just his latest drastic attempt to fix his damaged life.

As Gatz’s state of mind goes up and down along its plot, the movie frequently accentuates his warped and isolated reality, and Lanthimos and his crew often have some naughty fun with that. As cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s camera steadily imbues the screen with clinical atmosphere, the score by Jerskin Fendrix sometimes becomes quite overblown as blatantly underlining Gatz’s frequent mood swings, and you may also be amused a bit by the recurring image associated with a certain nutty conspiracy theory.

I must point out that the movie stumbles more than once during its last act as heading to its eventual finale, but I appreciate how it presents the finale with a bit more edginess compared to the original South Korean version. As watching this part, I am reminded again that 1) Lanthimos is sometimes as mean and misanthropic as some other European filmmakers such as Michael Haneke and 2) our species has looked incorrigibly unpleasant and horrible for many centuries despite showing some better sides from time to time.

The movie is supported well by the solid performances from its three main cast members. Jesse Plemons, who previously won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival thanks to his good performance in Lanthimos’ previous film “Kinds of Kindness” (2023), did an effortless job of balancing his deeply troubled character between pathos and madness, and his excellent acting is matched well by another fearless work from Emma Stone, who has steadily collaborated with Lanthimos since “The Favourite” (2018) and recently won her second Best Actress Oscar for “Poor Things” (2024). Between Stone and Plemons, Aidan Delbis holds his own small spot well, and he is especially effective when Don becomes all the more conflicted about what he really should do later in the story.

In conclusion, “Bugonia” is definitely not something you can casually watch, but I recommend it mainly for its skillful direction and good performance. Although the overall result does not surpass the oddball sensibility of the original South Korean version, I admire how Lanthimos brings his own style and touch to the remake version, and I think he had a fairly productive time as giving us no less than three distinctive works in row during last three years. I heard that he is planning to have a long rest now, and I guess we can all agree that he deserves that.