I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast · Bob Zerull

We Love Bugonia

·1 hr 13 min·7 clips

Lionsgate appears to have buried an anti-fascism thriller during politically turbulent times—raising questions about studio responsibility.

Sean Patrick and Jeff start with their usual housekeeping. Sean points listeners to JeffLassiter.com, his art, Etsy shop, Medium reviews, and a weekend appearance at Dark History and Horror Con, while Jeff tees up Predator Week, Prey, Die My Love, and the general excitement around Predator Badlands. Then the movie takes over. The movie's setup is ugly and simple: a beekeeper and his slightly slower cousin kidnap Emma Stone, drag her into a basement, and insist she is an alien, an Andromedon. The hosts stay with the central trick. He is clearly unreliable and mentally ill, but the film keeps giving his ranting enough factual weight that the conversation never gets to brush him off cleanly. That is the uncomfortable part of it. The movie turns conspiracy noise into something nastier, because the same man who sounds unhinged is also talking about biotech companies testing untested products on ordinary human beings, corporate damage, and the slow environmental collapse tied to colony collapse disorder. Sean and Jeff keep pulling on that thread. They talk through how the movie makes it hard to separate delusion from useful anger, and that is where the discussion starts to feel less like plot summary and more like a cultural diagnosis. The alien question stays alive. The hosts note how the story keeps teasing a twist, tugging the viewer between obvious skepticism and the nagging sense that the movie is playing dirtier than it first looks. They also like the movie's nasty timing, since it lands in a moment when a lot of crazy people say things that can sound right, and the film uses that discomfort instead of smoothing it over. The banter stays loose, referential, and happy to wander into box-office chatter, Predator comparisons, Rocky IV jokes, and the kind of side comments that make the show feel like an ongoing conversation instead of a formal review. By the end, the movie still feels unsettled, which is exactly why the conversation works.

As heard by us

A spoiler-friendly Bugonia discussion that stays sharp, unruly, and uncomfortably familiar.

Sean Patrick and Jeff keep the Bugonia discussion pinned to a hard, uneasy center: the man at its heart is plainly unwell, and the biotech rot he keeps naming does not read as imaginary.

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Why you'd press play

If you want Bugonia talked through like a conspiracy theory with a movie-critic brain.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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