Tag Archives: Saw (2004)

Cinema, New Releases, Oscar Bingo

Cinema Review: Bugonia (2025) – Lanthimos has a blast with this dark conspiracy-class-war-kidnap-comedy!

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Cinema Review: Bugonia (2025)

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Screenplay by Will Tracy – Based on Save the Green Planet! (2003) by Jang Joon-hwan

Produced by Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen, Miky Lee, Jerry Kyoungboum Ko

Main Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone, etc.

Cinematography by Robbie Ryan

*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ***

Yorgos Lanthimos has once again sneaked out of his uncanny terrarium and unleashed another piece of beautifully deranged cinema. Bugonia (2025)—a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s cult classic Save the Green Planet!—is part sci-fi fever dream, part hostage farce, and part spiritual meltdown. It’s like Ruthless People (1986) got trapped in a socio-political, beekeeping suit and force-fed ayahuasca.

Will Tracy’s script hums with the manic energy of someone who’s read too many conspiracy subreddits and decided to turn it into Oscar bait. The film pairs Jesse Plemons (whose face seems genetically engineered for moral unease) with Alden Delbis (playing his twitchy, Kool-Aid-eyed partner in cosmic delusion) as two eco-anarchist truthers who kidnap a pharma/tech CEO, played with imperial chill by Emma Stone. Their reasoning? Well, just wait and see. It is incredibly crazy with some severe plot turns. Yet, somehow Lanthimos and his terrific cast maintain verisimilitude within the setting and just about hang onto emotional connection for the characters.

What follows is a deranged pas de trois of torture, empathy, and total philosophical collapse. Plemons and Delbis interrogate Stone with the intensity of people who’ve seen too many YouTube conspiracy documentaries, while Lanthimos and cinematographer, Robbie Ryan shoot it with the intensity of a nature documentary directed by Lucifer. There are bees. There is honey. There are monologues about pollution, pharmaceutical company threat and environmental collapse. Further, Stone, who has now fully ascended into Lanthimos’ personal pantheon of holy weirdness, plays her role like a woman being both worshipped and flayed at the same time. She’s terrifyingly serene—like she’s founded a doomsday cult and smiled through the apocalypse.

It’s all utterly ridiculous, but Bugonia (2025) thrives in that space between laughter and dread. Lanthimos once again proves that absurdism isn’t about nonsense—it’s that nonsense is the only sane response to the modern world. I enjoyed this film way more than the obtuse Kinds of Kindness (2024). It has more akin, although not as devastatingly memorable, as his earlier Greek-language classics or The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). Moreover, if The Favourite (2018) was about power, and Poor Things (2024) was about rebirth, Bugonia (2025) is bleak, fatalistic morality tale about environmental apocalypse.

By the time the film’s final shots roll I was equal parts horrified, moved, and deeply amused. It’s an eco-horror-comedy that gorily plays like Saw (2004) meets famous beekeeping philosopher, Aristotle. Overall, Bugonia (2025) proves once again that Yorgos Lanthimos is cinema’s reigning apiarist of absurdity—and his audience are all his buzzing little drones.

Mark 8.5 out of 11

Cinema, Comedy, horror

Cinema Review: The Monkey (2025) – a hilarious horror sketch-show with gore masking an inconsistent totemic tale!

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Cinema Review: The Monkey (2025)

Directed by Osgood Perkins

Written by Osgood Perkins

Based on “The Monkey” by Stephen King

Produced by James Wan, Dave Caplan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Chris Ferguson, etc.

Main Cast: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Adam Scott and Elijah Wood.

Cinematography by Nico Aguilar

Following the financial success of his 2024 psychological thriller Longlegs (2024), Osgood Perkins has recently embarked on adapting Stephen King’s short story, The Monkey, into a feature film. While I didn’t quite connect with it Longlegs (2024) it had many impressed with its strange, atmospheric tension as well as Nic Cage’s crazy look and performance. The Monkey (2025), differs in tone though as it this adaptation with a blends horror and dark comedy, allowing Perkins to showcase his versatility as a filmmaker.

The narrative of The Monkey (2025) centres on twin brothers, portrayed by Theo James, who encounter a cursed toy monkey linked to a series of gruesome deaths. Perkins expands upon King’s original short story, infusing it with themes of family, fatherhood, reconciliation and a litany of grisly sudden deaths. Having found the simian death totem as teenagers, Hal and Bill Shelburn find their lives and those around them impacted in the most bloody explosive of ways. Indeed, there is much thought and planning given to these Saw and Final Destination franchise influenced on-screen set-pieces. In fact, the exquisite surprise and laugh-out-loud hilarity which occur throughout somewhat overpowers any emotional connection with the thinly-written protagonists.

The film’s gore and relentless pace are undeniably its strongest assets — the kills are extreme, inventive, and staged with a gleeful disregard for realism, echoing the chaotic energy of ’80s horror comedies. Each death sequence feels like a miniature horror short, packed with practical effects and over-the-top carnage. Perkins crafts these moments with a twisted sense of humour, making the film feel like a sketch-show carousel of nightmarish vignettes, each more outrageous than the last.

However, despite the visceral fun, The Monkey (2025) struggles to leave a lasting impression. Unlike the original Saw (2004) by James Wan and Leigh Whannell — a film that balanced its brutal horror with sharp social commentary and tightly woven mythology — Perkins’ adaptation lacks a deeper foundation. The cursed toy monkey serves as a simple harbinger of death, but the film never establishes consistent rules for how the curse operates or why it escalates the way it does. Without clear internal logic or meaningful subtext, the horror loses weight, and the emotional stakes fizzle.

While The Monkey (2025) succeeds as a frenetic, blood-soaked thrill ride, it ultimately feels ephemeral. The film’s surface-level scares and comedic flair make for an entertaining watch, but the absence of narrative substance or thematic resonance leaves it as little more than a fleeting novelty — a film you enjoy in the moment, but rarely think about after the credits roll.

Mark: 6.5 out of 11