A modern depiction of the absurdity of uncertainty in Bugonia
Even though the 2026 Academy Awards were almost a month ago and the ‘Best Picture’ excitement has died down, one of the nominees has remained on my mind ever since I watched it. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia may not have won the big awards of the night, but managed to to provoke a kind of reflection that outlasted the ceremony itself. Lanthimos is notorious for directing ambiguous, unsettling, and absurd projects, and Bugonia is no exception. I warn any reader who has not watched the film yet that there will be spoilers all throughout the article.
The dark comedy tells the story of a conspiracy theorist, Teddy (played by Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (played by Aidan Delbis) taking their convictions to the extreme when they kidnap the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company Michelle (played by Emma Stone). Leading the operation, Teddy interrogates and eventually tortures her as he is convinced that she is an alien, or an Andromedan. Through years of unreliable research in the deep corners of the internet, Teddy has concluded that the Andromedons are responsible for the decay and wretchedness of society today. He takes his impressionable cousin Don under his wing as he demands that Michelle bring them to her mothership so that he can heroically negotiate with the Andromedans and save humanity from the aliens’ destructive presence. Good and bad, true and false are deliberately played with, taking away any sure understanding the viewer may have up until the very end of the film. Teddy seems completely deluded, however as the plot unfolds the viewer cannot ignore the increasingly worrying possibility that he may be right and that we didn’t believe him. It is only until the penultimate scene where it is undeniable that Michelle is in fact an Andromedon, that the viewer is forced to relinquish the perspective they were so sure about, admitting that Teddy was right.
Bugonia toys with the viewer’s certainty through constant destabilization of the truth, presenting a conspiracy theorist’s far-fetched perception of reality as true in order to depict the absurd paradox of heightened ambiguity as a consequence of access to infinite information. The film an offers unsettling exploration of today’s epistemological condition in the internet-age, challenging our very own convictions.
Teddy
The character of Teddy is established early on in the film, fitting into the trope of the self-important and self-isolating male character. Initially, Teddy seems like the guy who is disappointed with the outcome of his life and rather than taking responsibility, he turns to internet conspiracies to find alternative justifications to his misfortunes. In doing so, he acquires ‘groundbreaking knowledge’ that he is convinced is true and extremely valuable, giving him a deluded sense of self-importance. However, when the people around him don’t validate his delusions, he self-isolates, falling deeper into his skewed perception of reality. To a certain extent Teddy is this guy, but the film gives him more nuance which helps us understand why Teddy is the way he is. Life has not been easy for him; his mother is comatose due to a failed pharmaceutical trial, he was molested as a child by his babysitter, and his father left when he was young. Being continuously let down by authority figures who were meant to look out for him, Teddy is hurt and angry, understandably desperate to find an explanation for his personal tragedies. Until the end of the film, the viewer sees Teddy as an emotionally unstable character looking for something to blame. There are a few black and white flashbacks showing Teddy’s memories which are visually shocking; one shows his mother hovering in the air in a hospital gown, another shows his mother in a bathtub with absurdly large needles coming out of her skin. Serving to give background information, the flashbacks also reveal how his perception of his past may be skewed by his trauma; the visuals are shocking to the viewer because that is how they felt to a young Teddy.
Teddy is purposefully made to be a picture of conspiratorial paranoia; he listens to alien conspiracy theory podcasts as he bikes to work, his windows are covered in tinfoil, he reads into online misinformation sources… In fact, we completely agree with Michelle when she diagnoses him of being in an echo chamber, which Teddy immediately rejects. Throughout the film, he is constantly having to explain himself to convince Michelle, his cousin Don, and the viewer that his findings are correct. “This isn’t about that, it’s about…”, says Teddy at multiple instances to correct the assumptions that are being imposed onto him by the other characters, however the end of this sentence changes every time. Teddy’s seemingly grandiose, selfless, greater good, motivations are not entirely cemented, though he does not seem to realize it himself. His certainty is presented as baseless, emotionally impacted, morally confusing, placing the viewer in a position of certainty that what he is saying is false. This serves to make his version of reality (the version where aliens roam the Earth and are responsible for humanity’s decline) as obviously absurd and impossible.
Michelle
What the character of Michelle represents changes dramatically as the film progresses, going from a figure of reassurance to a source of doubt. From the beginning, she is a point of comfort for the viewer; where Teddy is emotional, messy, and high-strung, Michelle is calm, grounded, and sharp. As seen in their side-by-side morning routines, she is Teddy’s exact counterpart. Teddy’s conspiracies based on pseudo-scientific research seem extra ridiculous when juxtaposed to the extensive scientific background we know Michelle has, making her the seemingly unwavering voice of reason. Her words are cautiously calculated; she speaks in a sterile ‘corporate jargon’-like way that particularly enrages Teddy. Teddy clearly does not want to engage in a “dialogue” as she suggests, he wants candid honesty, the truth. Her complete calmness, which is surprising given her perilous situation, does not register as an immediate red-flag to the viewer. We trust her.
The power dynamic between Teddy and Michelle is deliberately ambiguous. Though Michelle is physically powerless, her intelligence and groundedness seem to give her the upper-hand. The way Michelle acts is logical to the viewer; the viewer understands why she has to double-bluff when she realizes, after the gruesome electro-shock torture sequence, that Teddy will not relinquish his delusions. She is understandably trying to manipulate Teddy by feeding into said delusions to eventually make a run for it. However, when Teddy comes back from accidentally killing his comatose mother because of Michelle’s lies, it is shocking to us that Michelle did not escape despite having a clear escape route. This moment causes the viewer to doubt their own conviction about Michelle’s identity. Why is she continuing to play Teddy’s game when she could have escaped? Despite this being a bright, crimson red flag, the viewer still considers Michelle’s possible vengeful motivations, rather than giving into the most absurd option which is that Teddy was right. Michelle knows the truth, and the viewer knows that. However, our understanding of what the truth actually is reluctantly shifted. We are very slow to even consider that Teddy might be right because we blindly believe Michelle as the guider of our understanding.
Don
Teddy’s cousin Don is the tragic figure of the film; he is the collateral damage in a battle between opposing convictions. Out of love and loyalty, he helps his cousin play out his conspiracies about the Andromedons being the source of all evil in humanity. Contrary to Teddy and Michelle, Don lacks conviction, making him easy to manipulate. Though he follows Teddy, he is unable to decide what he thinks is true and Michelle tries to persuade him to lean into his doubts about Teddy. Don is pulled in two directions, and he eventually snaps. Torn between betraying his only family by letting Michelle go free or being complicit in the Michelle’s kidnapping and torture which he knows is morally wrong, Don shoots himself in the head with a shotgun. The scene is sudden, graphic, and heartbreaking. His tragedy illustrates a darker point in the film’s message; in an environment where truth becomes impossible to verify, uncertainty itself becomes a gateway for harmful manipulation. Don is the embodiment of what happens when certainty crumbles and truth becomes impossible to identify
The ENding
The ending of Bugonia is a real shock even though many clues hinted to the fact that Michelle was in fact an Andromedon all along. Our doubts quickly increased, culminating in a twist that validates the most absurd explanation. It destroys the viewer’s assumptions about how the truth should have looked. The most far-fetched version of reality ends up being true, causing us to experience epistemic whiplash, confronting us with the fact that our certainty was but an illusion. The final ending sequence is nightmarish but beautiful, leaving our remaining questions unanswered. Viewers can’t help but ask themselves why we confidently trusted Michelle.
It should be noted that the ultimate meaning of Bugonia is not to validate misinformed conspiracy theories. Rather, it forces the viewer to question where their ideas of the truth come from. Lanthimos plays with the theme of uncertainty by placing it in a modern context, exploring how it is affected by the access to infinite information in the age of the internet. Leaving the viewer with the feeling of unsettling complicity for the complete annihilation of humanity and the end, all because we did not trust Teddy.