Those who recall my review of Poor Things from the 2023 Venice Film Festival are well aware that Yorgos Lanthimos is not The Favourite; he seems to be for others. Would Bugonia change my views of the director? Weirdly, it is a remake of Save the Green Planet! (Jigureul jikyeora! 2003. For anyone who loves that film, a remake seems redundant. Would that be what the film feels like as well? Initially, the plan was for the director of the original, Jang Joon-hwan, to direct the movie, with Ari Aster serving as producer. That would make sense as a cash-in project for the director, at least. The purpose of the Greek director stepping in seemed strange at best.

The title, Bugonia, refers to a ritual based on the belief that bees were spontaneously generated from a cow’s carcass. Whether the ritual was in actual practice or was more of a poetic trope is unclear. Considering the fact that the main character in the original is a beekeeper, it is not unreasonable to flesh out that characteristic of the film. The beeginning actually put my disapproving mind aside for a few minutes. The official synopsis reads, “Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.”

The brain in the operation (I use the term loosely) is Teddy (Jesse Plemons), who is the one convinced that the CEO, Michelle (Emma Stone), is the alien from Andromeda. He is assisted by Donny (Aidan Delbis), who seems to tag along mostly in the hope of getting a chance to leave Earth altogether. Michelle’s company is responsible not only for a product related to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in bees, but also for an experimental drug to treat opioid addicts, which sent Teddy’s mother (Alicia Silverstone) into a coma. So, while Teddy appears to have a bee in his bonnet, it’s possible he’s less convinced about Michelle’s alien roots, rather than looking for revenge.

Bugonia

In any case, even though the pair are not the bee’s knees, they manage somehow to kidnap the CEO, hoping that she will confess everything. Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan. Michelle turns out to be quite feisty and provides both physical and mental resistance. In the original, the kidnapped person was a man, and the pair who kidnapped him was a couple. Lanthimos and the scriptwriter, Will Tracy, seem aware of the possible PC aspects of this, as it is referenced in the dialogue. It is done clumsily, and the parts of the film that attempt to address societal issues are on the same level as those in Fight Club (1999), or more recently, Eddington.

Bugonia deviates from the original in some ways, but primarily in being inferior in every conceivable way. It is nowhere near as inventive, and the violence has also been toned down. An incessant, intrusive score accompanies Robbie Ryan’s images, and they don’t fit together. It is clear that this is a conscious choice on Lanthimos’s part, but it still doesn’t work. The most egregious part is that the director, once again, appears convinced that the two components of the film clash in an interesting way. Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and the other actors seem to be going through the motions.

The major surprise was possibly the absence of Willem Defoe. Maybe he appeared in a scene and I missed it. Likewise, the cinematography doesn’t offer much cinematic value, instead relying on simplistic choices that could have been generated by asking an AI prompt to conceive a Lanthimosque project. It never looks remotely as beguiling as the original, but comes off as a trite knock-off. It is most of the time decisively boring. The dialogue often falls flat and mostly recounts things that the spectators already know or can deduce on their own.

I haven’t met a single person who liked it, but apparently the film received some positive reviews. Lanthimos can’t resist underlining the message even more clearly with an end sequence set to Where Have All the Flowers Gone. With that in mind, my question to the Lanthimos fans is: When will they ever learn? The answer is most probably not anytime soon. Watch the original instead.