We’ll never Regret Bugonia (Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features; Paramount Pictures)

Bugonia

Starring: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Helkios, Alicia Silverstone

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Running Time: 118 Minutes

Rating: R for Disturbing Content That’s Often Funny But Also Occasionally Trauma-Inducing

Release Date: October 24, 2025 (Theaters)

Regretting You

Starring: Allison Williams, McKenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Willa Fitzgerald, Scott Eastwood, Clancy Brown, Sam Morelos, Ethan Costanilla

Director: Josh Boone

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Mild But Frank Sexuality and Drug Use

Release Date: October 24, 2025 (Theaters)

When you see as many movies as I do, whether out of critical obligation or personal fulfillment or both, you tend to experience a lot of tonal whiplash. And it doesn’t get much more whiplash-inducing than the one-two punch of the semi-lighthearted satirical conspiracy thriller Bugonia and Regretting You, a tragedy-tinged romance based on a Colleen Hoover novel. Both are arriving in theaters on October 24 (Regretting You in wide release, while Bugonia will begin limited and then expand on the 31st). One of them is perfect for Spooky Season in an oddball sort of way, while the other would seem more at home around Valentine’s Day. With all that in mind, I’ll structure this two-for-one review around the question of whether or not they could possibly make for a successful date night double feature.

If you’re already in a romantic relationship in which you’ve bonded over your shared love of the cinematic landscapes of Yorgos Lanthimos, well lucky you. Perhaps you swooned together over his The Favourite and Poor Things but then got a little freaked out by him swerving back to his most off-putting tendencies with Kinds of Kindness. In that case, you’ll probably appreciate that Bugonia is his most accessible and straightforward effort yet. I imagine that might have something to do with the source material, the South Korean film Save the Green Planet! I’ve never seen it, but the posters sure make it look pretty wacky.

Anyway, this American update stars Jesse Plemons as Teddy, a beekeeper who works in the packaging department of the pharmaceutical company Auxolith. He’s convinced that Auxolith’s CEO Michelle (Emma Stone) is an alien bent on controlling humanity, so he recruits his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) to help him kidnap her and force an interspecies negotiation. If you love geeking out together with your boo over actors giving themselves over fully to a warped worldview, then Bugonia is absolutely an ideal date movie. Plemons plays Teddy as a sweaty but cerebral captivating presence who is desperate to prove that he’s not just some armchair conspiracist cliché. Meanwhile, Stone renders Michelle as way too overly measured in a way that corporate types often are, with the sort of flavor that makes you think maybe she is an extraterrestrial… and maybe you like that.

Now that we’ve settled on what Bugonia is all about, let’s untangle the mess of angsty knots that is Regretting You. The fulcrum character is Morgan Grant (Allison Williams), who finds herself trying to make sense of what her life has become in the wake of her husband Chris (Scott Eastwood) and sister Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald) dying in a car accident soon after Jenny and her fiance Jonah (Dave Franco) welcome a baby boy. Adding on the devastation, it sure looks like Chris and Jenny were having an affair, not to mention the fact that Morgan and Jonah have been suppressing their feelings for each other since they were teenagers. Meanwhile, how is there even time to also focus on Morgan’s daughter Clara (McKenna Grace), who’s flirting up a storm with her classmate Miller (Mason Thames) as they both try to get into film school.

Like a lot of romantic flicks, Regretting You could be resolved much more quickly and easily if the characters didn’t insist on hiding secrets from each other and thereby compounding misunderstandings. But you can at least understand why they put off the big reveals, considering the potentially painful emotional fallout. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not a frustrating viewing experience. Ultimately, this movie succeeds most as one long commercial for Paramount’s film library, as Clara and Miller’s cinephilia is expressed pretty much entirely through the output of the studio behind their movie. And well, that mountainous distributor has released some pretty good pictures over the decades, so that’s not all bad.

So could the prophesied Bugonia/Regretting You date night double feature ever really come to fruition? To give it to you straight: if you’re a moviegoer like me, then yeah, it actually could. Which is to say, you’re like me if you don’t need every flick you see to be excellent to justify the trip to the multiplex. Plus, after surviving the heater that is Bugonia, Regretting You could be the surprisingly perfect low-stakes cooldown. And you’ll want to be hanging out with someone you love to laugh with to get through something this dopey. After all, isn’t that what the Great Pumpkin has been trying to teach us all along?

Grades:
Bugonia: 4 out of 5 Andromedans
Regretting You: 2.5 out of 5 Paramount Movie Posters