Bugonia (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Jan 29, 2026
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Yorgos LanthimosRelease Date(s)
2025 (December 23, 2025)Studio(s)
Focus Features (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: C-
Review
So, what exactly is a bugonia? Historically, it was a ritualistic practice in Mediterranean cultures like ancient Greece. An ox would be sacrificed in one way or another (quite brutally so in some descriptions), and the rotting carcass would be left to bear fruit in the form of bees. Out of death comes new life, and since bees have always symbolized fertility and growth, bugonia is a potent representation of life itself. Of course, as with many ancient practices like scaphism (don’t look that one up if you want to sleep tonight), it’s not entirely clear if it really took place or if it was simply a literary invention. There are references to it dating back to the second century BCE, but since many of those are from poets like Nicander, Virgil, and Ovid, it certainly could be the latter (and never mind the fact that it’s unlikely that ancient peoples really believed that bees came from carrion). Regardless, it’s a very real historical reference despite the fact that it’s an unfamiliar one to most modern audiences.
So, what exactly does that have to do with the Yorgos Lanthimos film Bugonia? To paraphrase Saladin in Kingdom of Heaven, nothing. And everything.
Bugonia opens with bees that are part of an apiary kept by conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons). Teddy nurtures them at the rural home where he lives with his autistic brother Don (Aidan Delbis). Their mother (Alicia Silverstone) is comatose after having participated in clinical trials for a new drug developed by the pharmaceutical company Auxolith, and Teddy blames Auxolith CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) for their mother’s plight. Worse, he believes that she’s actually an alien from the Andromeda galaxy, sent to Earth to subjugate mankind, and that her activities are also responsible for the decline of honeybee populations. So, he convinces his brother to help him kidnap her and hold her captive in their basement. The plan is to force her to negotiate a meeting with her people aboard the Andromedan spaceship before the next lunar eclipse, but between repeated visits by an overly solicitous local police officer (Stavros Halkias), Don’s inability to maintain focus on Teddy’s insane conspiracy theories, and Michelle’s cunning attempts to manipulate both of them in order to escape, the bees may be the only ones who deserve their place in this world.
Bugonia is a remake of Korean director Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 film Save the Green Planet! (aka Jigureul jikyeora!), but the similarities are somewhat superficial. Screenwriter Will Tracy has stated that he watched the film once, took a few notes, and then followed his own muse after that. (His adaptation does follow the same general narrative structure, but the characters and incidents along the way have been altered significantly.) The project was in development for several years with Joon-hwan initially attached to direct, but he eventually stepped down for personal reasons, so producer Ari Aster brought it to the attention of Lanthimos. It ended up being a match made in heaven (or maybe in the Andromeda galaxy) despite the fact that Lanthimos usually developed his own projects. Once he came on board, he immediately started to reshape everything in his own inimitable fashion, starting with a new title that somehow manages simultaneously to say both more and less about the story than Save the Green Planet! did.
Lanthimos also made the crucial decision to shoot the majority of Bugonia in large format VistaVision, which created some practical challenges for the production. Lanthimos and his cinematographer Robbie Ryan were no strangers to shooting on film and had even used VistaVision for a single sequence in Poor Things, but the large, unwieldy camera was far too noisy to be feasible for use with such a dialogue-intensive script. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and they tracked down a different VistaVision camera (the Wilcam W11) that was quiet enough to make sync sound possible. Never one to make things too easy for himself, after having solved that problem, Lanthimos then insisted on constructing Teddy’s house on location as a full contiguous set with a real basement underneath it. Fortunately, production designer James Price rose to the challenge of making the house work as an enclosed space that still allowed the use of oversized VistaVision cameras.
Given the fact that Bugonia is a chamber drama that primarily takes place on a single location with just three main characters, the use of large format film might seem unnecessary (if not outright self-indulgent). When Quentin Tarantino chose to shoot The Hateful 8 in 65mm Ultra Panavision 70, the 2.76:1 aspect ratio felt at odds with what was essentially an indoor chamber Western. Yet VistaVision operates quite differently than standard film formats by using 35mm film that travels horizontally through the camera with 8 perforations per frame instead of the 4 used by vertical 35mm film. That results in a larger image area, but the full negative frame is still a relatively narrow 1.50:1.
When VistaVision was in active use during the 1950s, it was generally matted for projection, but Lanthimos embraced the 1.50:1 aspect ratio—he felt that it was using the largest format film to photograph the smallest of interpersonal conflicts in a constricted environment. Faces are everything in Bugonia, and they appear large-than-life when seen in closeup in the center of the 1.50:1 VistaVision frame. It blurs the lines between Teddy’s fantasies and Michelle’s reality, providing the perfect visual representation not just of the conflict between the two of them, but also of the conflict between paranoid fantasy and scientific reality. As a result, Bugonia finds its own reality, making Teddy’s conspiracy theories seem almost plausible. After all, big things start small, as Teddy explains to Don at the beginning of the film:
“It all starts with something... magnificent. A flower. Just a flower. Then a honeybee. Very fragile. Very complicated. The bee gathers pollen and deposits it in another flower’s stigma. It’s like sex but cleaner. And nobody gets hurt.”
Unfortunately, nothing is clean in Bugonia, and people will end up getting hurt as a consequence of Teddy’s elaborate schemes. It’s a cautionary fable that demonstrates how alienation from society and lack of trust in human institutions can lead individuals down dark paths. Still, Teddy has been hurt as well, and his own pain is all too real. All life exists through struggle, with even the smallest of human interactions demonstrating the survival of the fittest. The real question posed by Bugonia isn’t whether or not Teddy is living in a paranoid fantasy, but rather whether or not mankind is fit enough to survive this kind of struggle. Yet like the title that Lanthimos chose for the film, Bugonia is simultaneously about more and less than that. In some respects, it’s little more than a two-hour shaggy dog story that’s setting up a single punchline at the end.
In hindsight, that conclusion should have been obvious from the beginning. Yet Lanthimos has been careful to point out that he chose the concept of bugonia not just for its direct meaning, but also because it’s an unfamiliar yet evocative term. It’s not necessarily intended as an interpretive key to the film. While there’s really only one valid reading of Bugonia, Lanthimos wanted it to be experienced, not interpreted. It’s as much about the journey for these characters as it is the destination, even if that destination may feel like a fait accompli on repeat viewings. In the words of Ian Malcolm, if there’s one thing that the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously... but life, uh finds a way.
And as Bugonia reminds us, it’s going to do that with or without human intervention.
Robbie Ryan shot Bugonia on 35mm film in 8-perf horizontal VistaVision primarily using a Wilcam W11 VistaVision camera with spherical Panavision lenses, with a Geo Film Group Mini VistaVision camera serving as B camera. (The lenses were the same ones that were developed for One Battle After Another.) Arricam Studio ST and Arriflex 235 cameras with Zeiss Master Primes were used as backups when the B camera wasn’t available for dialogue scenes, and also when additional cameras were needed. (A high-speed Arriflex 435 running at 150fps was used for a single shot later in the film.) Ryan used Kodak Vision3 50D 5203, 250D 5207, and 500T 5219 stocks for the majority of the film, with the black-and-white sequences shot on Eastman Double-X 5222 instead. Despite the variety of cameras that were available on set, Ryan has estimated that 95% of the film was shot in full VistaVision.
The negatives were then scanned at 6.5K resolution, with postproduction work completed as a 4K Digital Intermediate, framed at the full VistaVision aspect ratio of 1.50:1 for theatrical release. (A limited number of 35mm prints were filmed out from the DI, with the 1.50:1 image pillarboxed within the 1.85:1 frame.) This version is based on the 4K DI, graded for High Dynamic Range in HDR10 only and encoded onto a BD-66. While the HDR grade doesn’t strain the limits in terms of contrast range, the stunning color design of Bugonia benefits greatly from Wide Color Gamut and 10-bit color. It’s simply gorgeous, with every subtle shade displaying perfect saturation levels (colorist Greg Fisher did boost the saturation at key points, but he was careful not to let it go so far that it looked what he termed “nuclear”). While the highlights aren’t particularly vivid, the contrast is still strong with deep black levels wherever appropriate.
Every last bit of fine detail from the large-format cameras is perfectly resolved, too. Ryan and Lanthimos favor shallow focus throughout the film, which draws attention to the focal point in the center of the 1.50:1 frame. Every strand of hair, every bit of stubble, and every pore on every face that lies within that center is as sharp as a tack, and the light grain field never interferes with it. It’s large-format film that looks like large-format film, and it’s a borderline reference-quality presentation. The only thing that could possibly improve on it would be to give it the greater data throughput available on a BD-100, but it still looks spectacular as is on a BD-66. (The limited extras and audio options certainly helps in that regard.)
Primary audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos. It remains subtly immersive at all times, with the sounds of nature outside of the house and the domestic ones on the inside creating a three-dimensional environment (the overheads come into play during the scenes set in the basement). While Bugonia is hardly an action film, there are still a few moments where the subs kick in and there’s a stronger sense of dynamic impact. Yet there’s no escaping the fact that Jerskin Fendrix’s Oscar-nominated score is the aural force that drives the entire film. As effective as the VistaVision visuals may be, they still wouldn’t have half the impact without Fendrix’s potent musical imagery—and it’s particularly effective in Atmos, with every instrument placed precisely within the soundstage. Like the video, it’s near reference-quality audio. Additional audio options include Spanish and French 5.1 Dolby Digital, with optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles.
The Universal Studios 4K Ultra HD release of Bugonia is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. It also includes a slipcover and a Digital Code on a paper insert tucked inside. There’s just a single extra, but it’s included on both discs:
- The Birth and the Bees: The Making of Bugonia (HD – 23:06)
It’s a somewhat perfunctory making of that features interviews with Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone, Robbie Ryan, James Price, costume designer Jennifer Johnson, hair & makeup designer Torsten Witte, and producers Ed Guiney & Andrew Lowe. And yes, the subject of Stone having her head shaved does come up; she points out that she got to shave Lanthimos’ head in return, although it wasn’t really a fair trade since he didn’t have much to begin with. Other subjects that are covered include how the project came together; why Lanthimos changed the title; the score; shooting in VistaVision and dealing with sync sound; building the sets; and the performances from everyone involved, including nonprofessional (and neurodivergent) actor Delbis.
That’s not much in the way of extras, but Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those filmmakers whose work stands best on its own, minus anything that could provide any interpretive lenses other than the ones contained within the film itself. Bugonia is best experienced, not overanalyzed, and this 4K presentation of the VistaVision cinematography provides a helluva way to experience it. Highly recommended.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).