11th November 2025
It’s been a couple weeks since my last post, mainly because I’ve been quite busy with other things, but also because of the few major films I’ve seen since the last review I’ve either had little to say — or in the case of a couple films I’m going to be talking about today, I feel they compliment each other quite well in what I would want to discuss about them.
The two films are Bugonia, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, and A House of Dynamite directed by Kathryn Bigelow. On the surface, these films feel very different from each other to two very extremes; Lanthimos’ films being known for their weird, unsettling, absurd films with heart, Bigelow known more for films with a more serious representation of war. Arguably, the first time Lanthimos and Bigelow films can intercept in the way they have for me here, because Bugonia left me with some weirdly complicated feelings on the ways it serves its characters, how their beliefs and flaws are almost undermined by the direction of the story, but how the overwhelming pessimism really works and leaves you impacted. I overall really liked Bugonia, but I equally felt a little baffled by what the film was really trying to tell me, when it felt the need to completely undermine what I had felt was the message at the time. However, it has been a couple weeks, and I have since also watched A House of Dynamite on Netflix, and while my feelings are largely negative on it, I found that reflecting on it makes me understand Bugonia more in a weird unintentional way. These two films are both essentially about the powerlessness of humanity, and that is something both very beautiful and terrifying. It’s why I wanted to write about both in one big post here because I found the parallels so fascinating.
It’s 2025, halfway through the 2020s; the cursed decade. We are about to experience the onslaught of films based on the first half of this decade, but you already know what happened if you’re reading this now. To start the decade, we had both a global pandemic and the fear of nuclear war, and while the latter did calm down quickly after, it’s still a threat that pops its head out time to time. Global relations are the most publicly rocky they have been for a while, Russia invading Ukraine, the 100 year long ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israel, the 2024 US election putting you-know-who back into power. I could go on, but you probably already know all this, so what’s my point? Well, I’m setting the scene here for perhaps the most overtly pessimistic decade where we are completely aware of how bad things are without just burying our heads in the sand like we used to. Obviously, people are still doing that as they always will, but it feels like we’re increasingly more aware. While we are in the rise of censorship, and stripping back of diversity to “fight back” against “the woke mind virus”, the filmmakers of any generation will always form their art around the truth.
For better or for worse, Bugonia and A House of Dynamite both feel like products of the past five years. They both ask the question: Are we ready for the end of the world?
Are We All Insane?
From the very start of Bugonia, it becomes very obvious what the core metaphor of this film is. Through Robbie Ryan’s stunning cinematography, the day in a life of a worker bee is portrayed, paired with a voiced-over conversation between the two central characters Teddy and Don; Teddy explaining the process the bees go through. Teddy is a beekeeper, but he is also a low level employee for Auxolith Corporation, a pesticide manufacturing company. Teddy then mentions how bee colonies are increasingly suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder, which is when a colony of bees leave their colony, abandoning their food source and their queen. He believes Auxolith’s pesticide is causing this to happen, and the reason for this is because the CEO of Auxolith, Michelle Fuller, is actually an alien that wants to kill all humans, and by getting rid of bees, it can accelerate the process. Though the usage of bee imagery is certainly for the CCD parallel, I think foundationally it draws parallels with Michelle Fuller as a queen bee while Teddy is a worker bee that’s abandoning his colony so to speak.
Anyway, Teddy, played excellently by Jesse Plemons, is portrayed as mentally unstable from the start. He seems very isolated, and distrusting. Despite that, his best friend and cousin Don is by his side. Don seems quite impressionable as he’s implied to be autistic I believe, and Teddy cares deeply for him, but equally he wants to fill Don’s mind with his own beliefs. Teddy’s fixation on his conspiracy theories of Auxolith’s CEO being an alien is depicted as insanity, and as we unpack more about his history, we find out about how Auxolith’s pesticides caused his mother to enter a permanent coma. So much of the situation is tragic, and then we later find out that Teddy was sexually assaulted by his babysitter, that is also a cop, when he was younger. These two major traumatic events helps you to see Teddy in a different light, he is undoubtedly insane and quite psychopathic, but its rooted in some raw, unresolved trauma, and he’s taken it out on society as a whole.
Our first introduction to Michelle Fuller is honestly fascinating. The ominous, unsettling score from Jerskin Fendrix plays over the morning routine of Michelle, and it is all we can hear. We see her from behind windows, from the outside of her car, and are fully detached from her entirely. It’s such a fascinating way to introduce her, but it ultimately dehumanises her in a way that Teddy does. He sees her, but is incapable of actually knowing her from anywhere but afar. There is a glass wall between “them” and “us”. Emma Stone is phenomenal as Michelle Fuller, as she really conveys this inhumane CEO, that only uses corporate language, and has absolutely no care in the world for other human beings unless it impacts her business. Yorgos’ framing of Teddy and Michelle for their first appearances paints two pictures; the one that Yorgos wants us to believe, and the one that is the final twist. What he wants us to believe is what I said above, about Teddy’s mental psychosis, how Teddy dehumanises Michelle but doesn’t actually know her. The truth is that it ultimately puts a glass wall between the audience and Michelle as we aren’t allowed to grow attached to her as a person and only see her as a cold corporate figurehead, and with the sinister music and constant distance, the film is actively dehumanising her and telling us she is deceiving us.
Yorgos is playing with us and consistently changing how we perceive the truth. At first, the true outcome felt it undermined the point of the film, and arguably I still feel it might, but I think with time I’ve seen how the uncertainty of the truth and the powerlessness we as a species have over our planet can cause anyone to spiral. Teddy has been indoctrinated by the internet, he’s obsessive over going deeper down a rabbit hole, and his cousin Don gets caught in the spiral. Ultimately, the two of them take different meanings from it; Teddy’s determination to heal his mother and get revenge contrasting Don’s disdain for life as it is, his feeling of complete isolation from anyone. The result is Teddy becoming a serial killer, and Don sadly choosing to no longer be alive. It’s a very dangerous spiral and it happens in real life, but the rug-pull of Bugonia is that Teddy was actually right. My gripe with this is that does making Teddy actually right glorify this kind of behaviour. It’s a matter of perspective though, because ultimately the final moments of this film spiral into complete insanity leading to the full extinction of humanity, so effortlessly done by Michelle’s alien queen form. What Yorgos presents is a reality check, Teddy may have been right, but he poked the wasp’s nest (Well, that’s kinda fitting..), and in turn doomed humanity. Michelle didn’t even have the intention to kill humanity, instead wanting to keep it alive, but that goodwill was destroyed, and we as a species must suffer the consequences. All of humanity just stops on what seemed to be a normal day, and it’s extremely unsettling and extremely pessimistic.
I felt maybe Yorgos was undermining the message of the dangers of the indoctrination of impressionable minds, but Teddy is condemned possibly in the most devastating way possible. Instead, I like to think Bugonia is showing us that we’re ultimately just bugs, and we can be squished so easily. Our hubris, our sense of power, it’s all completely pointless because it can be undone with one well-timed stomp of the shoe.
Powerlessness in the Face of Our Demise
I have less favourable thoughts on A House of Dynamite. Beyond a decent opening 40 minutes, Bigelow’s choice is to completely change the cast twice after. A House of Dynamite is a film about how the USA would deal with nuclear war, from the perspective of the workers and politicians at the top. Ensemble films, especially in the scenario of the film, absolutely have a place, and I can imagine a different edit of this exact film being better by default. I think my issues are more deep-rooted, there are many threads not picked up on at all; Kaitlyn Dever is in this movie for one scene, and is never mentioned again, but her role as the estranged daughter of the Secretary of Defence that happens to live in the state that is about to blow up, is seemingly unimportant to the bigger picture. I get why though, because the film is balancing so many big figures in the scenario that having some random guy try to reach his daughter again is unimportant. Arguably, that is antithetical to what a film about humans dealing with the end should be preoccupied with rather than showing us an abundance of offices and awkward silences. The POTUS is a character for the third act, and in concept, a film about the President having to deal with doomsday plans AND do normal PR stuff at the same time is more entertaining to me than a condensed trivial version. Essentially, A House of Dynamite is an ensemble film, 3 films in one, but maybe it should’ve focused on a different group of people. Perhaps the focus on the very human relationships in this uncertain time would be compelling.
If that sounds similar to Bugonia, that’s because in a different context, it is similar. Teddy and Don are overwhelmed with uncertainty of humanity’s fate, and Teddy has decided to take it upon himself to save the planet himself. The focus on the human element from well defined characters offers a unique perspective for us as an audience, especially with Teddy and Don’s dynamic, it gets you really invested in their characters, and there are stakes through that. A House of Dynamite‘s stakes peak way too early.. The aforementioned first act actually did a good job of having these stakes. While the characters aren’t as well defined as they could be, you share that common fear and hopelessness as it all seems completely pointless. Unlike Bugonia, A House of Dynamite never shows you the actual impact. It is undeniably the intent, we are made to get blue balls on this as to not give us the satisfaction in any form of certainty, the point is the hopelessness and the amount of people involved in making decisions in the end are doomed to be erased and we kind of know how it’s going to end. What Bigelow wants to invoke that feeling of dread, and pessimism. The issue I have with it is that we are not invested in any character at any point and so the film’s message feels a bit pointless, it’s stuff we already know and have accepted. What’s worse is the structure essentially changing casts each time it’s about to strike, builds more anticipation for it at first, but quickly fades any dread because you know it won’t be shown and you won’t see these characters suffer or even see the impact of the strike so why should you feel dread or even care where these characters go?
What I think the film does present well is that powerlessness that we actually have in this situation, and contrasted to Bugonia‘s two central characters, really pushes this pessimism in our species that made an interesting double feature. It’s 2025, and we are in the most pessimistic decade in a while, we’re all on edge and we’ve hardened up. Bugonia presents that paranoia and the impact of a traumatic situation in a different context and as a result it allows us to reflect on our own recent experiences, whereas A House of Dynamite feels clinical, and overdone. The most damning thing about A House of Dynamite is that the same film has been done way better, has accounted for more countries than America, and has been out since the 1960s. We are all too familiar with the scenario, and when it’s presented so generically, adding nothing to it, it stands out way more. But there were glimpses of a more interesting film in there, and in the 2020s I feel we demand a human angle because simple pessimism isn’t cutting it anymore. That’s my favourite part of not just Bugonia, but most of Yorgos’ work. He shows the silliness of humanity in contrast to a very pessimistic or abrupt ending, and it is no coincidence that Yorgos has become so much more popular this decade.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now. I wanted to talk about Bugonia, but I felt my thoughts weren’t interesting enough, but by comparing it to A House of Dynamite, it has really changed how I see the film. I think in general, 2020s filmmaking follows suit with a similar mentality. When you take a look at the films that have resonated the most with people recently, there is a heavy emphasis on a high contrast of absurdity and pessimism, I could do a part 2 just further comparing. My favourite film of the decade, Everything Everywhere All At Once is a direct result of this, being about extreme nihilism and depression whereas the film itself is so outwardly absurd that it resonates because the most popular films of each decade so effortlessly reflect the zeitgeist. Bugonia is a movie of its moment, A House of Dynamite is a decade late.
Newton's Law 