Bugonia

I just got out of this and I’m still processing what I watched because it was absolutely incredible from start to finish. Yorgos Lanthimos has made something so weird and beautiful and unsettling that I couldn’t look away for a single second. Emma Stone gives this performance that’s just beyond anything, she’s playing this corporate executive and every moment feels so committed and intense, whether she’s doing something darkly funny or genuinely disturbing or both at the same time. Jesse Plemons is perfect as this presence that shows up and you never know if he’s supposed to be real or symbolic or what, and the way he talks in this calm monotone while saying the most unhinged things is brilliant. The whole movie feels like it’s about capitalism and technology and alienation but in this absurd darkly comic way that never gets preachy. There’s body horror mixed with corporate meetings, there’s violence presented so matter-of-factly it becomes funny and then immediately stops being funny, there’s romance that feels genuine and deeply wrong at the same time. That dinner party scene in the third act literally made me gasp out loud, it was so perfectly executed and shocking. Everything about this is bold and strange and never plays it safe, it has real ideas about modern life and authenticity and connection but presents them through this wild surreal lens. I loved every single second of this. It’s exactly what I want from cinema, something that takes risks and commits fully to its bizarre vision and makes me feel things I wasn’t expecting. Nothing else released this year comes remotely close. Absolute masterpiece.