In the last nine years, actor Emma Stone and filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos have collaborated on five different projects — a short and four features — that have explored the ridiculousness of cruel friendship (The Favourite), of the human experience (Poor Things), of what it means to be kind (Kinds of Kindness) and, with their latest, of human cruelty (Bugonia). After a stint in theaters and accumulating several nominations for awards, their Bugonia, an adaptation of the 2001 dark comedy Save the Green Planet!, is available to own on physical and digital editions, each including a single 23-minute comprehensive behind-the-scenes featurette.
L-R: Director Yorgos Lanthimos and director of photography Robbie Ryan during the production of BUGONIA, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features © 2025. All Rights Reserved.
With a lunar eclipse set to occur in three days, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) puts a plan in motion to kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the CEO of a pharmaceutical company who he believes is actually an Andromedan alien in disguise with designs to destroy Earth. Once he’s kidnapped her, he plans to force Michelle to take him to the Andromedan Emperor so that he may negotiate on behalf of the human race. However, as the days drag on and Michelle continues to deny Teddy’s accusation, tensions rise and secrets are discovered from which none will escape unscathed.
The following home release review is based on a 4K UHD Blu-ray edition provided by Universal Pictures Hoke Entertainment.
Lanthimos is a particular sort of filmmaker whose tastes seem to run alongside the intersection of the absurd and the poignant. His works are comedies (mostly) so that we laugh, even when the proverbial darkness rises on the characters. Here, however, one doesn’t necessarily feel like laughing upon the conclusion as the absurdity utilized in the execution of the power struggle played out before us transitions from resolute conviction to doubt to heartbreak to acceptance. A good storyteller takes its audience on a ride and Bugonia is a rollercoaster on which we find ourselves consistently switching allegiances, regardless of the truth, because the facts are clear: humanity is a blight and capitalistic consumption is the illness being sold to us as the cure. It’s irrelevant whether Michelle is an alien or not, Teddy’s mission to save Earth is correct and his reasons are honest (even if they are decorated with years of trauma which created the necessity to search the world’s belief systems until he found one that made sense in his mind: alien domination). It would all be so much simpler if we could blame an outsider, an off-worlder, for our problems and, whether Michelle is an extra-terrestrial only matters to cement whether Teddy is a crank or someone who can see beyond the veil of reality, which is a significant part of the comedy and undercurrent ideas of the film. We blame someone else because reality is hard and doing the work of restitution is even more so. Of course, as the narrative plays out, Teddy has many a reason to distrust humanity, to look for Andromadans because the idea that humans would be so cruel to their fellows is difficult to swallow, thus leading to a tale of the absurd that plays out before us. But, as expected from Lanthimos, there’s nothing simple about Bugonia or the characters within it, beaten, broken, and entirely damned as they are.
Written by Will Tracy (The Menu) and based on Jang Joon-hwan’s (1987: When the Day Comes) original script, the fascinating thing about the film is the way it plays on paranoia. The script provides ample reasons to believe Teddy is an unreliable narrator from the surreal memories that play out in black-and-white with Alicia Silverstone (The Killing of a Sacred Deer) portraying his mother, Sandy, to the small hints of trauma dropped by Don to the language Teddy himself uses to convince himself and others of Michelle’s truth. It certainly doesn’t help in today’s age of corporate greed to view Michelle as absent humanity, a leap of logic that speaks to Teddy’s desperation to find logic amid a world of chaos and conspiracy theorists to find comfort in the “calm reason” their theories provide. Is it easier to believe that Michelle is a Andromadan bent on global destruction and that’s why her drugs kill people or that Michelle is a CEO running a pharmaceutical company who doesn’t see loss of life as anything more than collateral damage to be addressed from the annual pad account? The script makes it all quite clear by the end which reality is true, but it doesn’t necessarily matter and that’s what truly fascinating about the way things play out. Everyone is a victim; everyone is the abuser; all caught in a cycle of pain from which there appears to be no escape. It’s nihilistic to a degree, but that’s not the point nor the tenor of the film. Even as cinematographer Robbie Ryan (Poor Things; The Favourite) infuses much of the film with a sickly green indicative of mold, decay, or budding life, depending on one’s perspective. One thing is clear, we as a people are only as strong as our weakest link and if that means that our entire ecosystem is going to crap because of greed and the people claiming to care don’t take action (words are platitudes without merit), then all we’re left with is the green of infection instead of growth or rebirth. It’s in this way that, when the truth comes out, one can’t help to not argue with the conclusion — humanity is its own worst enemy whether we’re infecting ourselves, the planet, our solar system, or beyond. Even as a microcosm, Bugonia reveals humanity as a blight based solely on laziness and false presumption of intelligence.
As mentioned, there’s a single featurette, the 23-minute “The Birth and the Bees: The Making of Bugonia,” which offers a comprehensive exploration of the making of the film. Obviously, being both a Lanthimos project and an adaptation, a great deal could be explored and in-depth, but it’s kept tight instead. It opens with how Lanthimos was introduced to the script and then screened the original to see if he felt he had something to add as a contemporary adaptation 24 years later, then shifts to Stone and Plemmons (Kinds of Kindness) and their attachment to the project. With each person, the cast and crew offer their thoughts on them, which becomes particularly lovely when talking about relative newcomer Aidan Delbis, who plays Teddy’s cousin Don. Delbis was chosen from a pool of non-professional actors specifically because Lanthimos was looking for a certain quality of performer, but also, as he discusses here, because of the way non-professional actors can inspire non-traditional or unexpected decisions from his cast. For those interested in the set design, we get a brief walkthrough of the fully-built house set, as well as a few details on other sets used throughout the film. For the nerdiest viewers, we even get some backstory on the journey by Ryan to acquire the VistaVision cameras they use to capture the specific look Lanthimos sought for the film. A style that, personally, only seems to inflame the paranoia that courses throughout the film. The last few Lanthimos home releases have been sparse like this, offering a lone featurette for viewers to explore, and this one is at least a bit longer than the last, creating an opportunity for more learning.
This being a 4K UHD edition, a little time must be spent addressing this aspect. For those interested, the 4K UHD edition is a combo, so you will receive a Blu-ray and digital edition (good for MoviesAnywhere or Fandango redemption) that includes the lone featurette. Typically, if a 4K UHD disc has few-to-none supplemental materials, the bitrate is high as the film has data space on the disc. However, here, despite the visual presentation capturing the intentional sickly green look of this world, rich colors (reds; whites; browns), clear details in the close-ups, and wonderful contrast displayed in the intimate shots wherein figures are displayed in both light and dark, the bitrate is frequently extraordinarily low, hovering within the 40 Mbps range with occasional jumps into the 60s and 70s. The reason to mention this is that the max bitrate of a Blu-ray is 40 Mbps, which implies that one would experience a similar quality of picture on a Blu-ray, especially if upconverted with a 4K player, making the experience of the 4K seem less necessary to get the most out of the visual experience.
L-R: Actors Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone during the production of director Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features © 2025. All Rights Reserved.
Lanthimos informs us in the featurette that the title of the film refers to a Greek/Latin term referring to the belief that bees emerged from the carcass of a decaying ox. It’s a gross thought, but it’s applicable here not just because Teddy is an apiarist in his spare time, caring for several hives on his property, but from the notion of rebirth springing forth from death. Teddy’s mission is to save Earth from destruction, a selfless mission enacted for selfish reasons (as we learn), but it goes even deeper. It speaks the renewal process, to evolution, to survival, and the ways in which life can persist if not infected by avarice and gluttony. By the time the end credits appear and silence fills the screen, Lanthimos makes the title (via its meaning) quite clear and provocative in the way audiences have come to expect. The question then becomes whether we have the constitution to consider his intention and sit with our own culpability in the tale we’ve witnessed or will we have it roll off our backs, having it pass undigested? I, for one, think the film is worth pondering before undertaking any sort of world domination because the responsibility to rule is great and the impact total.
Bugonia Special Features*:
- The Birth of the Bees: The Making of Bugonia — Join Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and the rest of the cast and crew as they reveal what it takes to bring a Yorgos Lanthimos film to life on screen in all its fascinating, wonderful glory. (23:05)
*A digital purchase provides a limited license to access the content. See the retailer’s terms for details.
Available on digital November 25th, 2025.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD December 23rd, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Focus Features Bugonia webpage.
To purchase, head to the official Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Bugonia webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Video, Reviews, streaming
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