You blink, and Yorgos Lanthimos drops another one. Seriously. The man operates on a different temporal plane. Fresh off the Golden Lion win for Poor Things and the Cannes bow of Kinds of Kindness, his next cinematic curveball, Bugonia, just unleashed its first trailer. And oh boy, it feels like Lanthimos. That specific, unsettling, darkly hilarious frequency only he broadcasts on. Buckle up: Venice in September, theaters October 24th, nationwide Halloween. Perfect timing for something truly bizarre.
This marks the fourth consecutive feature (fifth if you count the short Bleat) pairing Lanthimos with his modern muse, Emma Stone. Here, she’s joined by the brilliantly unpredictable Jesse Plemons. The premise? A deliciously unhinged riff on the Korean cult classic Save the Green Planet!: Two conspiracy theorists (Stone and Plemons, one assumes) kidnap a powerful CEO, utterly convinced she’s an alien orchestrating Earth’s annihilation. Just your average Tuesday in Lanthimos-land.
The trailer? It’s a masterclass in controlled dissonance. Expect the signature visual grammar honed with cinematographer Robbie Ryan over their last four collaborations: those disorienting wide-angle lenses, the slow, prowling camera that feels like a detached observer, framing that’s simultaneously precise and voyeuristic. The tone? A heady cocktail of absurdity simmering with genuine, off-kilter tension. Stone, as the inscrutable CEO, oscillates between icy detachment and cryptic amusement—her delivery of “You think I’m what?” laced with quiet menace. Plemons, all nervous tics and jittery conviction, grips a knife with unsettling calm, muttering about “proof” like a man halfway off the ledge. The imagery—bug-eyed masks, a sterile corporate boardroom, a lone figure sprinting through a field at dusk—stitches together a puzzle that feels both ludicrous and eerily plausible. Classic Lanthimos.
You can’t discuss Lanthimos without the ghosts of cinematic giants hovering nearby. The Buñuelian DNA is undeniable – the surrealist impulse to shatter convention, the gleeful poking at societal norms. But where Buñuel often wielded his absurdity like a moralist’s scalpel, dissecting hypocrisy with satirical fury, Lanthimos leans colder. It’s that Kubrickian detachment, that almost clinical removal. His characters aren’t vessels for our empathy; they’re fascinating specimens under glass, moving with a strange logic dictated by the director’s chessboard. The trailer promises characters operating in their own bizarre, self-contained reality – a reality where kidnapping a CEO because she might be an alien makes perfect sense. The lack of overt moralizing? That’s the point. We’re just watching the strange experiment unfold.
This pervasive style – the visual disorientation, the emotional distance, the pitch-black humor bubbling under surface-level dread – is why Lanthimos stands apart. It’s why Dogtooth shocked and fascinated, why The Favourite was both riotous and chilling, and why Poor Things became an awards juggernaut. Bugonia looks primed to continue that streak. The Venice premiere (early September, mark it) is practically a given launchpad. The October release slots it perfectly for the fall festival buzz and the inevitable awards chatter that follows Lanthimos like a persistent, slightly unnerving shadow.
So, what’s the verdict from 90 seconds of footage? It’s unmistakably, gloriously Lanthimos. The trailer doesn’t just tease a plot; it vibrates with his unique authorial signature. It promises uncomfortable laughs, stunningly weird visuals, and performances dialed into his peculiar wavelength. Stone and Plemons look perfectly cast in this world of paranoid logic and alien anxieties. Is it a guaranteed masterpiece? Too soon. But is it the most intriguing, potentially unsettling cinematic event landing this Halloween season? Absolutely. Get ready for the weirdness. Venice awaits, then theaters October 24th. The aliens (or are they?) are coming.
