Bugonia (2025)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12300742/

I have mixed feelings about this movie.

First: acting was great. Everything I'm about to say is very much supported by the acting.

Here was my experience with this movie.

I heard about the movie a couple months ago, and vaguely knew it was about someone maybe being an alien. I re-read the synopsis before watching it, which gave me more of a feeling that the character probably wasn't an alien.

While watching it, I went back and forth several times whether I believed she was an alien or not. For most of the movie, the most plausible scenario was that she was not an alien. However, I knew there was a chance that there would be a twist and she would actually be an alien. (How many times can I say the word alien?)

That's kind of my problem with this. It feels like I was involved in a game between the director/writers and myself, where I was trying to puzzle this out, and the writers were tricking me until the very end. They won, honestly, and I was somewhat stricken at the end, or maybe actually self-satisfied due to my doubt.

But again, it felt more like an interaction between my and the writers, with the actors as the vessels of that interaction. This... actually sounds very deep and probably is actually a reflection of the purpose of all art and such. However, I think I'm actually trying to comment here about my level of investment in the movie.

My understanding of the characters obviously changed after the big "reveal". Suddenly, the crazy conspiracy theorist had actually been right about things. And the person we were empathizing with for most of the movie actually turned out to... go ahead and destroy all of humanity. (I do wish that last part was expanded on more. Why did the aliens need to kill everyone? I also have a problem with this because she displayed some empathy toward sidekick cousin guy right after his death (I think...), so how could she not care at all about wiping out civilization? Perhaps she lost all faith in humanity due to the events of this movie.)

I felt that this would've been a fine movie if the "twist" hadn't occurred. If it had just been about a CEO who was kidnapped and then managed to escape via her own wit. It would've been a great movie.

The ending cheapened it a little to me. It went from action/heist/drama to sci-fi. It cheapened my earlier understanding. But I'm not necessarily saying this turned it into a bad film. Just different. More wacky than the whole rest of the movie seemed. I read some review of the movie that said it should have been weirder earlier on, and maybe that would've made this change less harsh.

All that being said -- I am generally here for the experience and ride that the makers have charted for me. And it was a fun experience. And I know this is a remake of a film, so I feel like I can't be upset about the plot being the plot. I guess I can just be criticizing both versions, but I don't feel I can do that without having also seen the original. And unfortunately I don't think I liked the experience enough to watch the original. Even if I like the idea of having a deeper experience with the material. Gotta choose what to put my time into.

Overall. Good film. Fun. Thrilling at times. The twist ending was fun, but the execution of it with respect to the rest of the movie didn't sit totally right with me. But maybe that was the point.