Summary
Of all the films headed to theaters this upcoming awards season, few have received more pre-release acclaim than Yorgos Lanthimos' dark sci-fi comedyPoor Things,based on a 1992 novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray. It premiered in early September at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion, the highest prize that can be awarded by the festival jury. The hype transferred into the press with almost entirely positive reviews, resulting in scores of 94 on Metacritic and 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Everything is business as usual for Lanthimos, who has been one of cinema’s most exciting voices for over a decade.
Audiences may recognize the director’s name for the2015’s absurdist romantic comedyThe Lobster,starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. However, the movie that put him on the map was 2009’s equally absurdist family storyDogtooth. Starring Greek actors Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Passalis, and Mary Tsoni, the film is about a secular family in which the children have never seen the world outside their fenced-in countryside compound. After that came 2011’s psychological dramaAlps.
A through line began to show itself within Lanthimos' filmography: he can make his audience laugh as easily as he can make them wince. Such was the case withThe Lobster,2017’s psychological thrillerThe Killing of a Sacred Deer, 2018’s period comedyThe Favourite,and will likely be the same withPoor Things. Here’s what fans of Lanthimos can expect from his upcoming film.
What is Poor Things about?
After getting nominated for an Academy Award for her work inThe Favourite, Emma Stone teams up with Lanthimos again to play Bella Baxter, a suicide victim who is crudely resurrected by the deformed mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Bella is guarded from the outside world (much like the children inDogtooth) and yearnsto explore the meaning of life. Thus, she escapes with a slimy yet slick lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) to find liberation and happiness. Rounding out the excellent cast is Ramy Youssef (TV’sRamy), Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Christopher Abbott (Sanctuary, also starring Qualley), and Jerrod Carmichael (On the Count of Three, also starring Abbott).
The impetus of the storyresembles that of Mary Shelley’sFrankensteinbut with a modern feminist twist. Bella appears to have taken her life by dropping herself from a balcony, until Baxter finds her corpse and straps her to an electromagnetic device, zapping her back to life. She meets who appears to be the first man she has ever seen (other than Baxter) in Max McCandles (Youssef), feeds a couple of experimental hybrid animals, witnesses a society beyond her imagination, and eventually meets Wedderburn as she experiences a personal and sexual awakening. Tension and humor are sure to lie ahead.
When is Poor Things Coming to Theaters?
Prior to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike,Poor Thingswas scheduled to be released shortly after its Venice premiere on July 14, 2025. Fox Searchlight, now called Searchlight Pictures, pushed the date back to December 8 so that the film could gain its traction at more festivals such Telluride, the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival, and others. It will be interesting to see how successful the film will be at the box office and during awards publicity without any of its actors being able to promote it, per SAG strike rules. Searchlight will be employing a platform release, starting in New York and Los Angeles on its opening week and then expanding to more cities as the year winds down with the hope that strong word-of-mouth will put audiences in seats.
Understanding Yorgos Lanthimos
For those who have not seen a film by the Greek Weird Wave auteur, it would be wise to do so before seeingPoor Thingsgiven Lanthimos’divisive, unabashed filmmaking style. His characters often speak with a deadpan tone, their tragedies are meant to be ironically funny (at times), and everything is shot with very astute framing. Another of his trademarks is his juxtaposition between humanity and animals, which he often punctuates with shocking instances of animal cruelty (an important disclaimer to those not comfortable with this theme).
Nevertheless, Lanthimos' talent has proven to be alluring as he has made multiple films with his recurring actors like Farrell, Weisz, and now Stone, with whom he has already made a third film calledAND. There is no word on its potential release date, but the cast features more of his friends fromPoor Thingswith Dafoe and Qualley as well as Joe Alwyn fromThe Favourite.Newcomers include Jesse Plemons (Killers of the Flower Moon), Hong Chau (Asteroid City), and Mamoudou Athie (Jurassic World: Dominion). Movie buffs can only hope that Lanthimos fans will get their first glimpse of the secretive project soon in theaters as they watch the trailers leading up toPoor Things.
