Bugonia

I dislike Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia less than his previous films.  The Favourite, and Poor Things, were each atrocious, conflating ideas of beauty and goodness with reprehensible behavior and perversion.  Lanthimos dials things back a little for Bugonia, and by comparison to his previous work, this film feels tame.  

Bugonia is basically a post-modernist allegory; since we hurtled with reckless abandon past the point-of-no-return back in 2016, Lanthimos isn't sounding the alarm on climate change, rather he's letting us know what to expect.  But don't worry, everything will be ok, because the world will be better off without us.

Unsurprisingly, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons both give great performances, playing their characters with serious intensity that would be perfect for a solid suspense film.  Unfortunately, the final few minutes that each actor has onscreen effectively disregard the preceding film, and we're left with a final impression that squanders all the work that the actors put in up to that point. 

If this had been my first Lanthimos film, I probably would forgive the goofy final act, but his past films tell us that this wasn't a misstep, rather he has contempt for his audience, and is a pessimist, so he believes that this is the ending that we deserve.  The question is, why do so many people seem to enjoy this type of film? - and perhaps a better question is, why do I keep watching them?