Calling a film deranged is headline-grabbing – but in the case of ‘Bugonia’, it’s absolutely accurate. Yorgos Lanthimos once again delivers something outrageous, provocative and utterly bonkers. As with ‘Poor Things’, he specializes in giving us characters with extreme, sometimes sociopathic or unhinged ways of processing the world. It’s the dissonance that makes him so unsettling: a seemingly grounded, plausible world… with behaviour and violence that is shocking, grotesque and absurd. Michael Haneke is probably the closest comparison.

Emma Stone plays Michelle, CEO of a pharmaceutical giant, who is kidnapped by two conspiracy-obsessed cousins convinced she’s an alien. The film flips expectations – we initially see events largely from her perspective, watching her attempt to ‘play along’, manipulate them and buy enough time to escape. But the film then heads in directions that feel impossible to predict, culminating in a truly apocalyptic ending.

This also feels incredibly of-the-moment: a society where wild theories, misinformation and crackpot logic spread like wildfire. Jesse Plemons is superb as Teddy, traumatized by the fact his mother was harmed in a drug trial run by Michelle’s company, and as a result of which he does have a warped sense of moral justification. His cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) is more naïve, which Michelle exploits – pitting them against one another in ways that lead to devastating consequences.

There are scenes here that are jaw-dropping,  including one where Michelle persuades Teddy to feed his mother antifreeze, convinced it will help her wake from a coma. The class/power dynamic is crucial too – this works as a contemporary American parable about rage, alienation and total mistrust of institutions, but filtered through alien invasion aesthetics and dystopian horror logic.

And the ending… Lanthimos absolutely commits. It suggests not just individual collapse, but humanity itself being consumed by its own paranoia, powerlessness and lack of genuine progress.

It’s shocking, savage, timely – and unlike anything else you’ll see this year.