Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone take viewers on a wild ride in 'Bugonia'

Jesse Plemons has a plea: Pause Netflix and go see "Bugonia" in the theater.

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The film, in which he plays a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps and tortures Emma Stone's pharma CEO, believing her to be an alien, is the kind that might seem small in scope. On a certain level, it's three people the possibly insane mastermind Teddy (Plemons), his cousin and accomplice Don (Aidan Delbis) and their victim Michelle Fuller (Stone) in a basement. And yet, in the hands of filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and his collaborators, it feels big in scope too, with a booming score, raw performances, grand themes about perceptions of reality and the human experiment and an ever-escalating tension as you try to figure out whom to believe.

"It's a very entertaining film and a ride," Stone said in an interview alongside her costar. "It's not this heavy meditation on something. There is a bit of absurdism and that stamp that he (Yorgos) puts on everything where there's humor laced all throughout."

"Bugonia" arrives in select theaters this weekend on a wave of good buzz and reviews after premiering at the Venice Film Festival. But it's also coming into a theatrical marketplace that has been, at best, tough on art films and awards hopefuls, no matter how starry or well-reviewed.

Lanthimos' films have broken through the noise before, especially when Stone is involved. "Poor Things" was hardly an assured box office hit, but managed to make over $117 million over three times its production budget by the end of its run.