Bugonia - Subterranean Homesick Aliens

Bugonia - Subterranean Homesick Aliens

    I made my first blog post about this new movie called Bugonia, which at the time hadn’t even come out yet but now it’s out! Bugonia released in theaters October 31, 2025. The synopsis is short and it details a story about a high ranking CEO getting kidnapped by two men who believe she’s an alien. I’ve watched this movie in theaters and now I’d going to make a short analysis of the content using a 5 step critical process of  media literacy (as detailed by the project instructions). 

    This movies cast is fairly small due to most of the movie being shot within the house the characters reside in with the exception of a couple of scenes. The main casts members include Emma Stone, who plays Michelle Fuller, the high profile CEO and suspected alien. She is well known for various movies such as LaLa Land, Poor Things (same director), and Superbad to name a few. Jesse Plemons plays one of the kidnappers and conspiracy theorists, Teddy. He is well known for his roles in Breaking Bad; El Camino, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Kinds of Kindness. Aidan Delbis plays Don and is the other kidnapper, this movie is Aidan Delbis’s breakout role, he is on the autism spectrum and is a cast member of The Miracle Project, a fully inclusive theater in Los Angeles. A well known comedian, Satvros plays the cop who pops up every now and then to investigate strange occurrences regarding Michelle Fullers disappearance. The director of the movie Yorgos Lanthimos remade this movie the original being Save the Green Planet ! A Korean film made in 2003. Yorgos Lanthimos has made a couple of other films such as Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, The Lobster, and Dogtooth. He specializes in experimental and at times raunchy movies. 

    On opening weekend Bugonia had made $709,848 (4.5% of total gross) Box office link. Bugonia made $15,840,950 domestically, $14,748,000 internationally and $30,588,950 worldwide! Maybe I’m broke but that’s a lot to me. Besides majority of the sales being domestic, the United Kingdom made up a lot of the international sales which is interesting to me. Italy was second on the list and also the one comparable one, the rest of the countries just had some smaller numbers here and there.

    This movie was made by Yorgos Lanthimos and you can tell. I have only seen one other movie by him so my ideas might be alittle skewed, but in my opinion he has a specific style of directing. The music presented in this movie was similar to Poor Things. During tension there would be intense orchestras playing, and speedy instruments overtaking the scene, making you lean backwards to try and get away. He’s dramatic, the characters are strange and hard to get a grip on which tracks. For me the most noticeable difference within the movies is the color pallets. Poor Things had such bright and distinct color pallets, playing with gray scale as well. Bugonia stays fairly strict on its color pallets but I assume it’s within the limits of the setting, Poor Things had constant setting changes so I find this reasonable. In my opinion I think color still plays an important part, such as Emma Stones character, Michelle Fuller, having a reddish lip and her red coat on for the majority, due to red being such a domineering color it suits the character’s personality. I haven’t seen many sci-fi movies because it’s just not my typical genre this one especially stands out to me because it definitely has a lot of comedic moments. This is also hard to talk about because talking about alien spoils the ending because the movie is a constant idea of, is she or is she not an alien.

    In my opinion I think all movies have some sort of importance or message within them, even if unintentionally and even if I think it’s totally the worst. It just needs to resonate with even one person for it to have a purpose and a place on this earth. Things created by humans have an innate purpose in them because humans are good at becoming attached to things even if they dislike it, get sick of it or whatever else. I think this movie is important and it creates a diverse room for a lot of target audiences. For example general fans of the actors in this movie are going to watch, conspiracy theories will also be geared towards this movie too, people on the autism spectrum might be curious to see Aidan Delbis and his incredible role. This movie is definitely for a younger audience in their 20s or 30s but I think everyone has the capacity to enjoy it. In regards to stereotypes it definitely uses them, Emma Stones character is a typical “girlboss” CEO (heavy on the CEO) her use of corporate language dismisses the kidnappers and shows her pompous views and her idea that she’s “better”. The kidnappers, Teddy and Don are the typical suspects when you think of conspiracy theorist (overweight, underweight, greasy, unstylish, unstable). One thing is that Don’s character is under Teddy’s control, manipulating him and making him follow his plans because he doesn’t have anyone else. I think an autistic character being controlled is also something sort of stereotypical, but it isn’t harmful because Don is humanized, he’s scared, kind and he truly believes Teddy is good because he’s all he has. Personally I think it was tasteful and good autistic representation.

    This movie starts slow, it builds itself up and it becomes strong. You know it’s wrong but you root for Michelle Fuller to receive help. You look around and realize everyone is guilty nobody is a good person but you can’t help but want to root for anybody. This movies improves and is at its best at the end of the second act. You are full of adrenaline and shock, one thing after another, but it ends up falling a little flat. The movie is strong enough in the beginning and end to not completely flop but the ending isn’t a lot of people’s taste, calling it obvious, stupid and pointless people also disliked that some corporate criticisms didn’t delve or lead anywhere special. Rotten Tomatoes On Letterboxd, another film reviewing site most of Yorgos Lanthimos usually rates in between 3.5-4.0 out of 5 so I think it tracks. Honestly it got the same rating as the only other movie I’ve seen by him, Poor Things, which was a 4 out of 5 stars. I think it will be something forgotten soon but treasured by people who hold experimental and strange films on a pedestal. 

    Yorgos Lanthimos does not use social media from what I’ve seen. He has an instagram account but it only has 61k followers and the last post was made in 2014. I haven’t decided to watch any other of his works but I’ve considered watching The Lobster but my watchlist is in the 200s so who knows when I’ll get to it. I watched this movie with my boyfriend at the Eugene Cinemark, he had the same thoughts as me but he really enjoyed it, my friends and family haven’t seen it and it doesn’t sound like their planning on it.

    All and all this movie while having faults was a great watch regardless. It has enjoyable aspects great acting and something for most people. This movie was above average for most critics, and it’s probably a great movie to have on your resume due to it being pretty extreme but everyone kept up the incredible and realistic portrayals despite the movies crazy developments. I hope to see Aidan Delbi’s career continue to grow and Emma Stones partnership with Yorgos Lanthimos to flourish even further.

Bugonia - Yorgos Lanthimos, and his muse Emma Stone

Bugonia

    “Bugonia” is a 2025 movie releasing October 31, 2025 directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Conspiracies are everywhere and are embedded into pop culture, even more so in this post-covid world. Although conspiracy theories aren’t anything new, Yorgos Lanthimos is remaking a Korean film “Save the Green Planet!” And making it his own, he is taking the concept of how some people get overtaken with their fascination with certain conspiracies and allow themselves to do unacceptable things. Here’s the link to the Trailer.

    This movie’s synopsis is “ Two conspiracy-obsessed men kidnap the CEO of a major company when they become convinced that she's an alien who wants to destroy Earth.” Of course as i’m writing this I have nothing else to say about the contents of the actual movie but this movie has a couple of ad campaigns and of course, a movie trailer. This up and coming movie stood out to me due to the couple of ad campaigns I saw when scrolling on social media and as well as this first Article. I personally saw the promoted post on Instagram. Before that this movie wasn’t something I was interested in even though I heard about it briefly. I had previously watched “Poor Things” which also stars Emma Stone and is also directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. “Poor Things” was a fairly controversial movie which makes me curious what this duo is going to put out now. One thing I had heard going into this is that some people dislike how it’s being advertised. Claiming that they can’t actually tell what it’s about. I tend to disagree with that because I enjoy when trailers and ad campaigns are a little more ambiguous due to some movies giving the whole story on a platter during the trailer. Ad campaigns should make you curious and leave you unsatisfied, wanting more, which is exactly what “Bugonia” is making me feel.

    This is two of the ads going around currently to promote this new movie coming out. A purposefully graffitied billboard in L.A./New York City, and a social media post of a random account calling for an alien resistance, not including a website made as well. I previously wasn’t aware of the billboard (or website), probably because I live in Lebanon, Oregon. Looking into this movies ad campaigns going on I was made aware from this second Article I found is that during the movie preview you were only allowed to view the film if you have a bald head. If you wanted to view the movie and had hair there was a barber there to shave your head. Which is a playful and interesting way to advertise. I can see that being successful for word of mouth advertising. Imagine your friend is just suddenly bald and they told you they shaved their head to watch a movie, pretty crazy right? I would definitely tell other people about that cause it just seems so far out.

    These ads are especially interesting and seemingly effective due to the things mentioned above but they also bring attention to sort of strange things, I’ve noticed many people are suspicious of the wealthy, and sort of have an “investigative” mindset when it comes to them. In many different ways, for example they question everything about them. It ranges from biological sex investigations, to child predator investigations, and of course, alien investigations too. If someone is already into “investigating” celebrities this movie will certainly catch their attention, either negatively or it’ll make them curious. Either way creating an outrage is a surprisingly good way at gathering a lot of attention. In my opinion the use of billboards is fun because they weren’t vandalized at first so if a passerby who isn’t within the movie sphere is walking by one day sees it normal and then the next day totally scribbled all over, it’s gonna pique an interest. 

    Although using billboards isn’t new it’s still effective and reaches a large audience. Most people would be able to tell it’s a movie promotion due to it being Emma Stones face, but it would go over some peoples heads which could be good and bad. Either they’d look it up or totally ignore it. “Bugonia” isn’t targeted towards a certain gender but age group for sure, 20+ in my opinion. Yorgos Lanthimos movies tend to definitely has more adult themes so anyone under 17 wouldn’t be able to view in theaters without an adult. The billboards and the movie preview being in California/New York City also brings to attention wealthier people, even if thats without intention, L.A. is expensive to live in so to see those advertisement campaigns you’d live in the area. A more specific target audience is someone inclined to more strange films, due to it dealing with conspiracy.  

    The trailer doesn’t give too much about the movie besides Emma Stone’s character sort of being a “girlboss” wealthy CEO, and the 2 conspiracy obsessed men being sort of shaggy and bum looking. Which doesn’t give much to infer about stereotypes because it’s important to mention regardless.

    I mentioned above that some people found the advertisements to be devoid of any substance and useless at showing what the movies actually about. I personally found the advertisements to be fun and it made me want to know more. I found this movies ad campaigns more tasteful than some others I had seen. For example the movie “Terrifier 3” or even the second one. It had random influencers and sponsored posts on social media talking about how gory it was and about how people were passing out in theaters. It just made people curious but it diluted public reactions because everyone would just say it wasn’t as bad as it was claiming thus genuine reactions from non sponsored people then discouraged others from seeing it. Above I mentioned above I found this movie’s ad campaigns to be fun and enjoyable and makes you curious to know more about the movie due to the campaign to be not very self explanatory to the story the movie is trying to present. The ad campaigns are shocking and garner attention to the movie without lying about it’s intentions or contents. My first Article mentions how “Blair Witch Project” was the first to use viral marketing tactic marking the way for many other movies including this one and “Weapons” and “The Batman” which all have websites pertaining to the movie. This is the website made for the “Bugonia” movie.

    I think using social media and making a website to market for movies is a fun way to promote something and allows for people to interact with the ad campaign directly. 

    In conclusion “Bugonia” has a couple of fun and effective ad campaigns going on and I’m excited to see if it lives up to my expectations. The one thing that especially surprised me is that “The Blair Witch Project” was the first to do this sort of viral marketing tactic. I think the website is a good and human touch to this ad campaign, due to it feeling immature-ish. I hope that this movie is good because it would be a bummer if I made a whole blog post on a subpar movie, but I have faith in the duo of Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos.

About me!

 

My name is Valerie Castellano I’m a second year political science major and I decided to go to LBCC straight out of high school to get my associates for the little to no cost compared to a 4 year straight away. I will continue my schooling to get my bachelors and then hopefully pursue law school. I’m most interested in constitutional law but I think all practices are interesting in their own way. I’m interested in just keeping up with current events and I try to keep up atleast in a casual manner. I hope to learn alittle bit about the transition of journalism when the internet was created and how that shifted the field and I wonder if the topics journalists covered have a large shift or not. I’m mega passionate about movies! I love all types, i’m typically drawn to older movies but I try to keep up with new releases. Recently I started a Studio Ghibli binge and I found my favorite so far to be “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”. 

Some of my favorite movies also include “Serpico”, “The Best Years Of Our Lives”, and “An American Werewolf In London”.

I won’t say I have the most accurate sources of information but typically I start from TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. None of these are totally accurate but If I see something on them I’ll look up the news on google and look at some article sources. One thing about my Instagram use is that I do follow local news, for example The Oregonian. These are my news sources out of convenience to be honest. I guess I don’t particularly find anything totally reliable first glance but most things are biased in some way so I feel lost at times. I don’t know too much about deep fakes but the concept is sort of horrifying to me. Honestly I am pretty concerned about the media’s ecosystem but I’m not completely sure about what to do about it.