‘Bugonia’ director Yorgos Lanthimos explains why that shocking ending is actually ‘hopeful’

• Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the ending of “Bugonia.”
• In “Bugonia,” Emma Stone plays a CEO who is abducted by conspiracy theorists who believe she’s an alien.
• Director Yorgos Lanthimos broke down the movie’s conclusion for Business Insider.

The “Bugonia” ending may seem dark, but Yorgos Lanthimos sees the opposite.

The Oscar-nominated director known for “The Lobster,” “The Favourite,” and “Poor Things” offers another absurdist look at the human condition with his latest movie. But this time, there’s also a stirring ending with apocalyptic ramifications.

“Bugonia” stars Lanthimos muse Emma Stone as Michelle Fuller, a powerful pharma CEO who is abducted by two men who believe she is an alien.

‘Bugonia’ ends with an outlandish reveal

Throughout the movie, lead abductor Teddy (Jesse Plemons) tries to get Fuller to admit she’s an alien, doing everything from shaving her head (he believes it will stop her from communicating with her mothership), to performing painful tests on her.

The movie ends with Fuller admitting to Teddy that she is an alien and that her kind has been on Earth since the days of the dinosaurs. In that time, she says, they created the human race. But throughout evolution, her kind have watched on in disappointment as humans fought each other. Fuller, a high-ranking member of her race, has been on Earth conducting experiments, one of which involved Teddy’s mother (Alicia Silverstone), in the hopes of elevating humans to a higher level of species. But it has not been successful.

With Fuller’s mothership set to enter the Earth’s atmosphere with an upcoming lunar eclipse, she tells Teddy he can see for himself that what she’s saying is true. She brings him back to her office and tells him that walking into her closet in the office will transport him up to the ship. Teddy has strapped a bomb on himself just in case she’s not telling the truth. He walks into the closet and closes the door. Then the bomb detonates, killing Teddy and knocking Fuller unconscious.

Fuller awakens in an ambulance. Realizing she has little time before the lunar eclipse, she jumps out of the ambulance and races back to her office, where she transports back to the ship. Believing the human race is hopeless, she informs those on the ship that it’s time to extinguish them. She pops a bubble over a model of the Earth, which kills all humans instantly.

The final shots of the movie show humans dead across the globe, all in different everyday settings, when they suddenly perish.

Though the ending is bleak, Lanthimos sees hope

Lanthimos, who based “Bugonia” on the 2003 South Korean movie “Save the Green Planet!,” believes his ending “allows people to understand things about themselves.”

“A lot of people think the ending is very hopeful, and there are people who think it’s very bleak,” the director told Business Insider. Some people told him they changed their opinions the very last moment: “They thought it was bleak, and then they changed their minds after the last shots, which made them feel more hopeful.”

The director acknowledged that the ending is sad, but noted that he took pains to make the final shots of humanity’s death “gentle and human.”

“That’s another thing that was important, to not have a bombastic kind of ending, but to be more emotional and thoughtful and emotive,” he said.

Where does Lanthimos stand on the ending, bleak or hopeful?

“I think it’s hopeful,” the director said. “I think even if it’s quite sad, it allows for some hope to start again, in a way, and maybe make things better. I think it allows for that kind of positivity.”

“Bugonia” is now playing in theaters.