The film pairs macabre humor with striking performances and a clamorous orchestral score, culminating in a praised montage finale after a prolonged build-up. The tonal shift toward serious, tragic material in the ending raises questions about whether the earlier black-comic violence and single-joke slapstick sufficiently prepare viewers for that pivot. The work functions as a remake of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet! with a gender swap for the corporate antagonist. The plot follows Teddy, a beekeeper driven by ecological despair, who kidnaps and tortures corporate executive Michelle after blaming her company for environmental and personal harm.
Yorgos Lanthimos's macabre and amusing new film has a predictably strong performance from Emma Stone, an intestine-shreddingly clamorous orchestral score from Jerskin Fendrix and, most importantly, a wonderful montage finale but frankly it's a very, very long run-up to that big jump. Added to which, there is the question of whether this bizarre if sometimes heavy-handed black comedy has fully earned its eventual pivot to serious tragic issues in the ending.
Does the globally traumatised finale succeed in retrospectively upgrading the significance of what has preceded it? Do these avowedly important images and moods quite match up with the single-joke-single-punchline movie with all its violent slapstick grotesquerie that went before? Working with screenwriter Will Tracy, Lanthimos has remade the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet!, changing the gender of the corporate character.
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