Oscar Watch 2026 – Bugonia

The storyline follows a man with obvious mental health issues who convinces his cousin that the CEO of the company he works for is actually an alien who is out to destroy the human race. They kidnap her with the intent of forcing her to stop her mission and contact her superiors to end their experiments on earth. The kidnapping does not go as planned and everything goes sideways.

Tedious at times in its rhetoric, the movie is one political statement after another. It lands feet first on mental illness, then goes on to cover the willingness of the human race to legitimately accept the vast quantities of information available to us through the internet (whether real or manufactured) from any source (whether legitimate or not). It hints at the catastrophic effects of humans on the planet through war and environmental destruction. The dismissal of science and valid research in favour of pseudo-science and conspiracy theories is an ever-present theme throughout the movie.

It is a drama, it is science fiction, and sparsely comedic. IMHO it was an okay movie with too much ambition towards educating the collective unconsciousness. Not an Oscar contender. I felt like the kid in the back of the classroom with underestimated intelligence, being talked down to by a professor who got tenure simply because he wrote a book. No thanks, I’d rather experience life than be scolded for it.