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.