Bugonia (15)

Emma Stone stars as a CEO who is kidnapped and accused of being an alien in Yorgos Lanthimos’ class-warfare satire.

Conspiracy-crazed Teddy (Jesse Plemons) has enlisted his neurodivergent cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) on a mission to kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Teddy believes Michelle is an alien in human guise, bent on destroying Earth. In Stone’s portrayal, she emerges as something even worse: a corporate bot – part Elon Musk, part Elizabeth Holmes – frighteningly adept at masking her anti-humanity behind performative empathy. Teddy, isn’t exactly sympathetic either; manipulating his cousin by persuading him to join him in ‘chemical castration’, so as to keep their minds on the task at hand. What follows is a series of interrogations as they try to force out the truth from this so-called extra terrestrial.

In true Lanthimos style, this is ludicrously fun, yet dark and spiky. Based on the bonkers 2003 Korean film Save The Green Planet!, it all plays out like a madder version of Misery, if James Caan’s character was accused of spraying neonicotinoid pesticides on bees. Riveting, unhinged, and sardonic to its core, this is another Lanthimos-Stone winner.