Conspiracy theories have been all the rage for awhile, but over the past decade they have picked up a sizable amount of steam amongst incredibly online individuals. These “theories” also seem to be becoming more and more unglued as they spin out in various corners of the Internet. From Pizza Gate to adrenochrome, to flat Earth and lizard people each step a conspiracy theorist takes feels less and less grounded in reality. Yorgos Lanthimos bases his main characters in his newest film, Bugonia, on two true believers in a conspiracy that feels genuinely insane, but also like something you’re likely to run into in some of the less savory corners of the net.

Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) live in rural America, where exactly is never pinpointed and the lack of clarity of the film’s surroundings feel purposefully vague. They’re preparing for a massive part of their movement to save not just America, but the entire planet. As they go around stocking up on supplies and prepping their humble home it’s revealed that they believe aliens exist on Earth, and these fiends are trying to enslave the human race. The aliens are of course walking among us in disguise and it’s only the enterprising research that Teddy has done that will rescue Earth from the ETs nefarious plotting. The target of their ire is a pharma CEO by the name of Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), who they are certain is a high ranking official in the alien’s royal court.

Bugonia moves fairly quickly, the abduction of Michelle happens fast. Teddy and Don are about as bumbling a pair of criminals as have ever been put to screen and the antics of their kidnapping make for entertaining comedy. They get Michelle to the basement of their home, shave her head (without her hair she won’t be able to contact her mother ship, obviously), and demand that she bring them to her leader. Plemons dogged insistence that he is right is at once both a gripping performance, and farcical comedy. The determined way he explains that Hydrocortisone cream will weaken the alien that is Michelle Fuller as he smears it on her skin is something to behold. The pair of Teddy and Don are comedically misguided, but their rage at the system that has eaten away at their lives is perfectly just.

Michelle’s initial reaction to the kidnapping is the kind of placating dismissal we often see from CEOs of all shapes and sizes. Getting a CEO to admit wrongdoing is difficult under ideal circumstances, getting one to admit that they are an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy here to take over Earth is nigh impossible. It’s important context too that Teddy’s relationship with Michelle is not just one of following her in news stories. Teddy not only works in the warehouse of the pharma company that Michelle runs, but also his mother’s (Alicia Silverstone) health has been adversely effected by medicines that they have created. Like I mentioned earlier, the rage is justified, even if the methods and motive are steeped in nonsense.

So much of what the movie does well is in its portrayal of these characters working against one another. Michelle is sympathetic because she has been kidnapped by psychopaths, but she’s also rudely psychotic in her own way and the company she runs is destroying the world in a much worse way than an alien could hope to achieve. Meanwhile Teddy and Don are hapless and lovable to an extent, but they have been radicalized by fiction that they found online.

It’s a shame then that the messaging of the film is muddied by its ending. It’s hard to see what point, if any at all, Director Lanthimos is trying to make. It feels towards the end that Yorgos doesn’t want the world to make it out of any of the predicaments that we’ve found ourselves in. That everyone, conspiracy theorist and pharma CEO all deserve to have their ends met in undignified manners. And while there is poetry and comedy in how that plays out on screen over the two hour runtime, it feels jaded and confused by the time the credits start rolling.

3.5/5