Bugonia is one of those rare conspiracy films where the real conspiracy is happening in the audience’s head.
I’d previously watched and read Poor Things, so I thought I’d be prepared. I went in expecting conspiracy chaos: basement corkboards, red string, wild eyes — that whole cinematic “the truth is out there and also very sweaty” aesthetic.
Instead, the film does something far more annoying.
It starts calm.
There are barely any characters. The offices look as if everyone has quietly gone home forever. Corporate careless people minimalism as mood. The supermarket feels the same. It’s like someone ran the conspiracy genre through a Scandinavian furniture filter.
And somehow it works.
Jesse Plemons (ex Breaking Bad/Civil War - "What kind of an American are you?") plays the conspiracist with zero irony, which is exactly right. He isn’t crazy in the Hollywood sense. He’s simply a man whose internal model of reality has drifted… a long way from the shared one. Watching him feels disturbingly plausible. Don, his neurodivergent sidekick/cousin, riffs convincingly alongside him.
If you saw Emma Stone in Poor Things you’ll know she can play chaos incarnate. Here she does the opposite: corporate stillness. Executive ice. The emotional equivalent of reinforced glass. Well — maybe not in the fight scenes. Or when she has to walk like a damaged spider.
Also: the house. Whoever designed that location deserves a medal. It’s so detailed it becomes a character. I believe the American 1800s house set was built near Henley-upon-Thames. Ironically, it’s the most trustworthy character in the film.
Meanwhile Stone’s sun-drenched 2000s glass-box home is actually in Oxshott, Surrey — yet the film somehow convinces you the setting is somewhere like a well-heeled 'burb of Atlanta, Georgia.
The cinematography helps. The colour has the same sumptuous quality as Poor Things. It feels like proper film stock rather than digital, and the frame is used to the full — so instead of letterboxed widescreen you get saturated arthouse compositions where you can see all the surfaces.
But the cleverest trick is what the film does to you.
You can’t help building theories. Obviously. Your brain wants to solve the puzzle. Conspiracy cinema trains you to do that.
And then — very politely — the film lets you realise you’ve built the wrong explanation.
That pinprick realisation changes everything.
Which means the real conspiracy was happening in your head the entire time.
Clever. Recommended.
