SPOILER ALERT With Jimmy Nichols: Bulgonia: So many twists I had an existential crisis

Some of the best films of the year won some of the biggest awards, offering food for thought after people left the theater. 

“One Battle After Another” won best picture at the Oscars, while teaching serious themes about activism and immigration. “Sinners” won Outstanding Performance by a Cast at the Actor Awards and taught audiences about the black experience in the South 

“Bugonia,” however, was a movie that received its flowers- but also felt like it did not. It received four Oscar nominations. 

Best Picture, Best Actress for Emma Stone’s performance, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Score were the nominations it received, but it won zero Academy Awards. While this year’s Oscars were very competitive, it is still surprising that a movie of this caliber did not win any awards.  

The movie follows Emma Stone’s character, Michelle Fuller, who is a powerful CEO, who is kidnapped by Teddy Gatz and his cousin Don. Ted, played by Jesse Plemons, is a conspiracy theorist who believes Fuller is an alien from Andromeda. 

The cousins kidnap her with the hopes of being taken to the mothership and negotiating on behalf of humanity the removal of the aliens from Earth. After drugging Fuller, they shave her head because her hair is how she communicates back with her people, and they cover her in lotion to block her neurotransmitters.  

Emma Stone shaved her head for this movie, and the baldness being real adds something to the movie. It adds to the creepiness and uncertainty of the movie. 

“Bugonia” is a lot of different genres in one. It is sci-fi, thriller and drama all mixed into one. The entire movie builds this tension between Gatz and Fuller about whether he is right and if he will ever let her go. 

Jesse Plemons deserved to be nominated for Best Actor for this movie. While I think Michael B. Jordan is the correct winner, Plemons deserved the recognition to at least be nominated for this role.  

It feels like his character is constantly slipping mentally, but he has everything under control. He is the guy in charge and the expert but does not know what to do next.  

He shows that he cares for others and wants to help them but will gaslight others into helping him. 

Gatz manipulates his cousin Don, who is autistic, to help him with his plans even though he is constantly expressing how he is unsure if this is right and if he even wants to help. 

Fuller realizes Gatz’s mother was one of the patients in her company’s clinical trial and is in a coma because of the experimental medicine. Believing this to be the reason why she was kidnapped, Fuller tries to talk to the unstable Gatz, but he tackles her and starts to strangle her for mentioning his mother. 

Without going into too much detail to avoid spoilers on the new film, the last thirty minutes of this movie have so many twists and turns, keeping the audience on the edge of their seat.  

Like the other great movies this year, “Bugonia” leaves viewers with a greater theme to think about after the tape stops rolling. It offers existential thoughts for the viewers. 

When the movie finished, I realized how short our time on Earth really is. We are not here for a long time, and eventually, everyone is forgotten.  

We need to make the most of our time here and cherish those we have while we still have them. The world would be better if we were all kinder to one another. 

“Bugonia” is a fantastic movie, finishing just one minute under two hours. It is fast-paced, and when you think you have it figured out, it will twist again.