‘Bugonia’ Composer Jerskin Fendrix Scored Yorgos Lanthimos’ Film Without Ever Reading the Script: ‘It Was Unconventional’

Major plot details for Yorgos Lanthimos's latest film, "Bugonia," are discussed below, including its conclusion. A significant shift occurred in the director's creative partnership with his frequent composer, Jerskin Fendrix. For this project, Lanthimos deliberately withheld the screenplay and barred Fendrix from watching the source material—Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 South Korean cult classic "Save the Green Planet!" This directive, issued in 2023, stood in stark opposition to their work on the Oscar-winning "Poor Things," for which Fendrix received the script and concept art, and "Kinds of Kindness," where he had access to the full screenplay. This new method of creative deprivation fundamentally altered their collaborative dynamic.

Instead of a narrative, Lanthimos provided only three cryptic words as a creative brief: bees, basement, and spaceship. Fendrix has described the challenge of fusing these unrelated ideas without a story as a difficult yet ultimately rewarding puzzle. The film's plot, which sees Emma Stone's character Michelle—a pharmaceutical executive—kidnapped and held in a basement by beekeeper Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), eventually reveals the meaning behind the trio of words. Teddy, convinced Michelle is an alien, tries to force a confession from her. Fendrix spent months researching the concepts, exploring their individual symbolism and potential connections before writing a single note. As film music historian Dr. Anya Sharma notes, "This approach forces the music to exist as an abstract emotional landscape first, creating a score that feels less like a commentary and more like a visceral, unconscious presence within the film."

During his compositional process, Fendrix delved deeply into the systems and iconography associated with each term. He found particular inspiration in the geometric perfection of honeycomb, interpreting it as a metaphor for the complex social hierarchy of a hive and the structural engineering found in both subterranean rooms and interstellar vehicles. The recognizable drone of bees was woven throughout the soundtrack as a persistent auditory motif. For the basement sequences, however, he aimed for a sound that reflected the tragic obsession of a man consumed by a conspiracy theory, a character who genuinely believes he is the sole guardian against an apocalyptic threat. This aligns with a common thread in Lanthimos's filmography, where isolated individuals construct elaborate, solipsistic worlds to cope with their reality.

The movie's stunning third-act revelation validates Teddy's paranoid beliefs: Michelle is indeed a member of an ancient Andromedan race that has been observing humankind since its inception. Fendrix originally composed distinct sonic palettes for each concept—a grand, traditional orchestral theme for the spaceship, an entirely synthetic soundscape for the basement, and a hybrid of the two for the bees. However, Lanthimos's final edit subverted this plan. The composer's majestic theme for the alien craft was entirely removed. In the film's final moments, the only music that accompanies the spaceship's appearance is the ambient, synthesizer-based piece initially conceived for the basement. The resulting audio landscape is not triumphant, but instead evokes a feeling that is simultaneously tranquil and profoundly alien, perfectly underscoring the film's complex and disquieting climax.