🔗 Share this article Bugonia Isn't Likely to Be Stranger Than the Science Fiction Psychological Drama It's Inspired By Aegean avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for highly unusual movies. His unique screenplays veer into the bizarre, like The Lobster, in which unattached individuals need to find love or risk transformed into creatures. In adapting another creator's story, he often selects source material that’s pretty odd too — odder, perhaps, than his cinematic take. Such was the situation with 2023’s Poor Things, a screen interpretation of author Alasdair Gray's wonderfully twisted novel, a feminist, sex-positive take on Frankenstein. The director's adaptation stands strong, but partially, his unique brand of weirdness and the author's balance each other. The Director's Latest Choice Lanthimos’ next pick to interpret also came from unexpected territory. The basis for Bugonia, his newest project alongside leading actress Emma Stone, was 2004’s Save the Green Planet!, a bewildering Korean genre stew of sci-fi, black comedy, horror, satire, psychological thriller, and cop drama. It’s a strange film not primarily due to what it’s about — even if that's decidedly unusual — rather because of the chaotic extremity of its tone and directorial method. The film is a rollercoaster. A New Wave of Filmmaking There likely existed a certain energy across Korea during that period. Save the Green Planet!, helmed by Jang Joon-hwan, was part of a surge of audacious in style, boundary-pushing movies from fresh voices of filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook. It was released concurrently with Bong’s Memories of Murder and Park’s Oldboy. Save the Green Planet! isn't as acclaimed as those celebrated works, but it shares many traits with them: extreme violence, morbid humor, sharp societal critique, and bending rules. Image: Tartan Video The Plot Unfolds Save the Green Planet! focuses on a disturbed young man who captures a corporate CEO, thinking he's a being hailing from Andromeda, intent on world domination. Initially, that idea unfolds as slapstick humor, and the protagonist, Lee Byeong-gu (the actor Shin known for Park’s Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), appears as a charmingly misguided figure. Alongside his innocent circus-performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jung-min) wear black PVC ponchos and ridiculous headgear encrusted with psyche-protection gear, and wield menthol rub for defense. However, they manage in kidnapping drunken CEO Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik) and transporting him to Byeong-gu’s remote property, a dilapidated building constructed on an old mine in the mountains, which houses his beehives. Shifting Tones Moving forward, the film veers quickly into increasingly disturbing. The protagonist ties Kang to a budget-Cronenberg torture chair and subjects him to harm while declaiming outlandish ideas, ultimately forcing the innocent partner away. Yet the captive is resilient; powered only by the belief of his own superiority, he can and will to endure awful experiences just to try to escape and lord it over the mentally unstable younger man. At the same time, a notably inept police hunt for the abductor gets underway. The cops’ witlessness and incompetence echoes Memories of Murder, although the similarity might be accidental in a movie with a plot that comes off as rushed and spontaneous. Image: Tartan Video Constant Shifts Save the Green Planet! just keeps barrelling onward, propelled by its own crazed energy, breaking rules underfoot, long after it seems likely it to either settle down or falter. Occasionally it feels as a character study on instability and excessive drug use; in parts it transforms into a metaphorical narrative about the callousness of corporate culture; sometimes it’s a grimy basement horror or a bumbling detective tale. Director Jang brings the same level of feverish dedication throughout, and Shin Ha-kyun is excellent, while Lee Byeong-gu keeps morphing between visionary, charming oddball, and frightening madman as required by the movie’s constant shifts across style, angle, and events. One could argue this is intentional, not a flaw, but it can be rather bewildering. Designed to Confuse It's plausible Jang aimed to confuse viewers, of course. In line with various Korean films during that period, Save the Green Planet! is powered by an exuberant rejection for genre limits in one aspect, and a genuine outrage about man’s inhumanity to man in another respect. The film is a vibrant manifestation of a culture establishing its international presence alongside fresh commercial and social changes. It promises to be intriguing to observe how Lanthimos views the original plot through a modern Western lens — arguably, an opposite perspective. Save the Green Planet! is accessible for viewing for free.