Bugonia

Bugonia

Netflix has added a bunch of new movies to its slate recently, and while some are higher-profile than others, like Charlize Theron’s new Netflix original Apex movie, others are getting wholly ignored.

I wanted to spotlight a movie that just hit Netflix that was one of my favorites of last year, one that was snubbed in both Oscar wins and nominations in the 2026 show, Bugonia.

The story follows a conspiracy theorist (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin (Aiden Delbis) as they abduct a CEO (Emma Stone), believing she’s secretly an alien and must be interrogated until she admits it. The concept may be bizarre, but the performances are out of this world and easily among the best of the year.

The snubs? While Emma Stone was nominated for Best Actress, the award went to Jessie Buckley for Hamnet. Having seen Hamnet, I get the praise for Buckley’s performance, but I still can’t get over Stone in this Bugonia part. I do wonder if this being a record for the youngest person ever to have seven Oscar nominations (passing Meryl Streep) and already winning two (La La Land and Poor Things), maybe created a “it’s someone else’s turn” situation for this year.

But at least she was nominated. It was Jesse Plemons, who I think was snubbed for either a Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor nomination (the line between those is often blurry), as he didn’t land either. Honestly, I think he gave an even better performance than the already-amazing Emma Stone. Plemons was nominated for an Oscar in 2022 for The Power of the Dog, alongside his wife, Kirsten Dunst, for a role in that same movie. Neat, but he didn’t win. Rather, he retains the title of “if this guy is in your movie, you know it’s going to be good,” a common Hollywood notion these days, given his resume.

Bugonia was also nominated for Best Picture, but I can’t say I’m shocked it didn’t win that one over the likes of Sinners and One Battle After Another (which won). The performances are better than the full movie, in this case, but it really was one of my top films of the year overall (Sinners was probably number one).

Bugonia is an extremely strange movie, and the ending is likely to divide most viewers, but if you like Stone, Plemons or good character dramas, I would definitely recommend it, as there’s more to it than meets the eye. It’s not even charting in Netflix’s top 10 list right now, another snub, but go seek it out manually, I suppose.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.