Bugonia

What an absolutely insane rollercoaster. So happy I was able to keep myself away from anything about this prior to getting to it. Such a great Emma stone performance. Plemons performance I can see was good because I don’t wanna say it’s good mainly because he pissed me off but that was the point. One of the few things I knew about this movie was that Stavros was in it and it still shocked me to my core. Kept me guessing the whole time. I knew that someone would die to the bees and I knew someone would die to the gun but neither really happened how I thought it would. And I thought that the CEO would escape by Don letting her go and that definitely didn’t happen. So many great reveals and great moments. They did jump the shark a bit at the end. Another one where I think they went so far that I’m not sure I get everything thematically. Is it supposed to be that the theorists are right and stuff really is messed up? Or is this making fun of those people? I guess probably just making fun of them. Any way about things, the literal events shown on screen made for a really entertaining time. This was also definitely a horror movie in my opinion which I was not expecting but enjoyed.  Touched on corporate greed, mental illness, social medias creating echo chambers and that effect on mental health, with a lot more. Also a lot more. Some of it was hard to sit through, especially him insisting she was an alien at the duration of the movie where you “know” she isn’t. But I guess kinda the whole point is that he was right and we all just assumed he was crazy? While the twist I thought was a little cheap, I don’t wanna say it wasn’t earned. There was definitely foreshadowing. When he shocked her, he was going off past experience and knew that he confirmed she was actually an alien. And when plemons gets back to the house, she starts going on this rant about the aliens’ plans. I was like oh she thought all this up cuz she knew she couldn’t get away. She also asked how many were aliens and he said “2” and then she gets angry. You think it’s because he’s just killing humans and then she says she didn’t expect him to come back which points towards her not formulating a lie when he came back. Then later they reveal that it was all true and all that they said was very literal there. At the first reveal of the twist I was a little disappointed but I think it was earned and recontextualized a lot of scenes. They played off the fact that the rest of the movie was very grounded and they knew that everyone would assume she wasn’t an alien. The more I think about it, the more I really love the twist.  Really great horror comedy that kept me interested and really grew into itself after somewhat of a slow start. What I thought would be a really grating time turned into a candidate for movie of the year candidate for me. Easily my favorite Lanthimos I’ve seen thus far. Edit: Almost got on my high horse about this being something really original but then realized it’s a remake…I could cry.