Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film Buggonia is a remake of the 2003 Korean cult movie Save the Green Planet! (Jigu-reul jikyeora!). The story follows Teddy, a factory packaging worker who, convinced his company CEO Michelle Fuller is an alien responsible for his mother’s condition, kidnaps her with his cousin to force a confession. While many scenes echo the original—most notably intense interrogation and torture sequences—Lanthimos shifts the root cause of the protagonist’s monstrosity from state violence and historical trauma (as in the Korean original) to corporate capitalism and class injustice. In Buggonia, the pharmaceutical company Oxcollis is depicted as callous, reckless in clinical trials, environmentally harmful, and able to buy off wrongdoing—making Teddy a victim of economic exclusion rather than political repression. Critics praise the remake as a powerful reimagining that retains the original’s dark edge while updating its social critique for a different cultural context.
