I am reviewing Bugonia (2025) and Save the Green Planet (2003) together because I watched Bugonia before I discovered that it was a remake. As a rule, I don't watch remakes, especially Hollywood versions, because my experience is that they are never as good as the original.
In this case, however, both of these films were excellent. My understanding is that Jang Joon-hwan was scheduled to direct the remake but was unable due to health issues. The choice of Lanthimos as replacement was perfect - I can't imagine anyone else truly understanding the wacky, dark humor of this narrative.
Both films operate as a brilliant, hilarious, and deeply sardonic condemnation of mankind's worst impulses; the corporate titan at the center is a symbol of everything the industrial revolution unleashed upon the world. The films ask: what if the real aliens are those who've become so disconnected from humanity, from the earth itself, that they've transformed into something monstrous? The conceit, played with dark absurdist humor, becomes a funhouse mirror reflecting our own ecological devastation, our worship of profit over life, our willingness to sacrifice everything for growth, expansion, conquest.
Hwang Jung-min and Emma Stone both deliver spectacular performances as the corporate head, each bringing completely distinct energy to the role. Hwang embodies a certain kind of entitled arrogance with physical precision; Stone brings her signature intensity, that coiled spring quality that can snap from charm to menace. Similarly, Lee Byeong-gu and Jesse Plemons as the alien hunter couldn't be more different in their approaches, yet both are utterly compelling. Lee's manic desperation contrasts sharply with Plemons' measured, almost gentle menace; it's fascinating how the same narrative can accommodate such divergent interpretations and still maintain its strange, unsettling power.
The South Koreans currently own the world when it comes to dark cinema, and Save the Green Planet deserves its 10/10 for sheer creativity, audacity, and tonal control. It's a film that shouldn't work, that juggles too many genres, too many tones, and yet it becomes something wholly original. Bugonia follows closely at 9/10, and honestly, it's gutsy as hell for a Western production. In an era when Hollywood too often sands down edges and softens blows, Lanthimos preserves the original's willingness to go to uncomfortable, absurd, and uncompromising places. Both films understand that sometimes the only appropriate response to our collective madness is laughter, and laughter is the vaseline that lets Joon-hwan insert the probe, er, I mean film's message.
