Save The Bees

            Last Friday, I went to the movies after work like usual. Since it was Halloween, I wanted to see something scary, and there were two new releases. One was called Violent Ends, and the other was called Bugonia. I did not know anything about either of them, except for who was starring in and directing Bugonia, so I assumed it was not scary, and a movie called Violent Ends that came out on Halloween was guaranteed to be a horror movie. Of course, I was wrong. Violent Ends ended up being a movie about the mob in middle America, and Bugonia was the more disturbing film.

            Bugonia centers on three main characters: Teddy, Don, and Michelle. Teddy and Don are family, and they live in a secluded house outside of Atlanta. Michelle is a CEO of a company that is giving off Amazon vibes. Teddy is convinced that Michelle is an alien, and that the aliens have taken over earth and are making it a worse place. He specifically refers to the reduction in the population of bees, but his view on this is larger than just the bees. So Teddy and Don go and kidnap Michelle when she gets home from work one day, and they bring her back to their home. Teddy is willing to do whatever it takes to make her take them back to the mothership, so that he can convince the aliens to leave Earth.

            Yorgos Lanthimos directed this film, and he makes weird films. His films exist in a reality of their own. It seems like his worlds are more exaggerated, so the possibilities are greater. This means when Teddy says that Michelle is an alien, an audience familiar with Lanthimos’s work knows that this could be a possibility. That is how the movie drew me into it. As the movie progressed, I kept vacillating on whether I thought there were actual aliens in this film or not.

             Teddy is portrayed as an internet addict. His mother is extremely sick, and this grief has drawn him into a pit. He needs someone to blame her illness on and the rabbit hole he went down led him to believe it was aliens. Despite this hard to believe idea, Teddy comes off as very well spoken and intelligent. The meat of this movie is centered on conversations between Teddy and Michelle, and Teddy did not back down from Michelle. She was the CEO of this massive company, and it took all of her mental strength to convince Teddy of anything. Even when she agreed with him on something, he just figured that she was humoring him.

            To classify this movie as horror would be a little much, but it was much more horror adjacent than Violent Ends. There are multiple deaths in this, a kidnapping, and violence. It also is done in an incredibly tense and stressful manner. There were multiple times when I flinched in my seat due to what was shown on the screen. For example, Teddy smashed Michelle’s knee, and that was brutal. The rest of the movie she was limping around, and I could just feel that pain in my knee.

            The performances in this movie are exceptional. Teddy is played by Jesse Plemmons, and he does a great job of being confident, large, and in charge, but he is also able to contrast this with showing serious pain and vulnerability. There is a scene where he is riding his bike down the road fervently, and he is sobbing, and there is a blend of rage and depression brewing inside of him, and it is an incredible moment.

Emma Stone plays Michelle, and Stone has really tapped into her dark side. She is no longer sweet and innocent, but instead she is intellectual and conniving. Her motivations are self-preserving, and whatever she is serving up seems real. Her ability to switch between rage toward Teddy and compassion toward Donny was well done.

I would be remiss not to mention Aiden Delbis. He played Donny. Aiden has autism, and his character is very quiet and has strong physical mannerisms. Donny is an interesting character. He feels like he has no one else in his life except for Teddy, and this can be easy to believe with their isolated living situation, but it is clear he wants more. From his conversations with Teddy and Michelle, he asks about space and what his life would be like up there. He does not feel at home on earth, and he thinks his life would be better in space on the ship, and even though his verbal participation is few and far between, it is easy to feel sympathetic to this man being drawn into a situation out of his control. Like when he keeps asking Teddy to use the bathroom during dinner, and Teddy keeps telling him no. It is uncomfortable.

            The idea this film poking at is who is right? Are the internet sleuths right? The people that sit there on YouTube and dive deep into the world of conspiracies. Do they make valid points? Or are the people that get all of their information from news media outlets right? The people who feel that their opinion is right because their news outlet of choice said it was real. In the end, it feels like Lanthimos is saying that there is a middle ground that needs to be explored. Conspiracy theorists might not always be right, but there might be some validity to what they believe, and just because some people watch the news all the time does not mean that the information they are receiving is without bias. The important thing is that conversations are happening, and that they are happening with an open mind and civilly.

            This movie is centered on in person conversations and debates. In the real world, conversations like these rarely happen like that. Instead, they are done behind keyboards without any face-to-face repercussions. People can say whatever they want online, and it just leads to more problems than solutions. I feel like every time I get onto Facebook or Instagram I see some controversial opinion being posted, but I do not see what the point is of doing this other than to provoke. I just do not see someone reading a Facebook post and going, “You know what this post really persuaded me, I am on their side now.” I feel like I am an easily persuaded person, and I just roll my eyes when I see political posts on Facebook, because I think it is just not doing anyone any good. I do not know what would actually cause change, but I do not think Facebook is the solution.

            Spoiler: At the end of the movie, we find out if Michelle is an alien or not, and as it turns out she is. They did a good job of keeping you guessing throughout. I do feel like it fell off the hinges a little bit with this reveal. Michelle went up to the spaceship, and she said that humans were beyond saving, so they popped a bubble, and all the humans died. This led to one of the most artistic scenes of the film. They flip from place to place showing stills of people dead just in the middle of doing activities or their jobs. They even showed Fernbank Museum in Atlanta! This makes sense because the movie was mostly filmed in Georgia.

            Ultimately, I really enjoyed this film, despite its bleakness in saying that we are all doomed due to our inability to communicate with each other in a functional and appropriate way. I feel like this is not too far from the truth, and House of Dynamite, which came out the week before on Netflix was basically based on that same idea. Instead of aliens though, they said it would be due to a nuclear war, but it had the premise of people not being able to communicate to the point of destruction. I do think movies that have nihilistic points of view are worthwhile though, because not everything can end in a happy ending. It also seems to hold true to the ideals of the Yorgos filmography. I would definitely recommend seeing it, but it is not for everyone. 4 Stars!