Yorgos Lanthimos tells the story of Bella Baxter, a young woman in Victorian-era London who was brought back from death by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Godwin Baxter. Bella has the body of an adult but the mental development of a toddler, and the film follows her accelerating journey from childlike innocence through adolescent rebellion to full autonomy as she travels across Europe, discovers pleasure, reads philosophy, and develops her own moral framework from scratch. It’s a Frankenstein story reimagined as a coming-of-age comedy, and it’s unlike anything else in recent cinema.
Lanthimos, known for the deadpan cruelty of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, makes a surprising pivot here toward warmth and exuberance. Poor Things is still dark, still strange, and still filled with moments designed to make audiences uncomfortable. But for the first time in his career, the director seems to actually like his main character, and that affection gives the film an emotional center his earlier work deliberately avoided.
Emma Stone’s Fearless Transformation
Emma Stone’s performance as Bella is the kind of work that careers are built around. She commits to the physical and vocal transformation with total conviction, beginning the film with jerky, uncoordinated movements and clipped speech, then gradually developing fluidity, curiosity, and wit as Bella’s brain catches up with her body. It’s a performance that could easily tip into caricature, but Stone finds the humanity in every stage of Bella’s evolution.
The visual design is stunning. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan and production designer Shona Heath create a world that looks like a Victorian fever dream, with fisheye lenses, surreal skylines, and interiors that blend surgical theaters with fairy-tale architecture. The film’s visual language shifts as Bella does, moving from black-and-white confinement to explosive color as she ventures into the wider world.
The supporting cast matches Stone’s energy. Willem Dafoe brings real pathos to Dr. Godwin, playing the mad scientist as a damaged man who deeply loves his creation. Mark Ruffalo is hilariously pathetic as Duncan Wedderburn, a swaggering lawyer reduced to a jealous wreck by a woman who refuses to be possessed. Their performances give the film its comic backbone while Stone provides its emotional spine.
Too Much of Everything for Some
Poor Things is a deliberately excessive film, and its excesses will be a barrier for many viewers. The sexual content is extensive and graphic, occupying a significant portion of the film’s runtime. Lanthimos uses Bella’s sexual exploration as part of her broader awakening, but some viewers will find the sheer volume of these scenes tiring or gratuitous regardless of their thematic purpose.
The film’s tonal range is extreme. Slapstick comedy sits next to philosophical inquiry. Graphic sex scenes follow moments of genuine tenderness. Grand Guignol surgical imagery gives way to romantic sunsets. For viewers who appreciate this kind of tonal volatility, it’s exhilarating. For others, the constant shifting prevents the film from developing the sustained emotional momentum it sometimes reaches for.
The feminist reading of Bella’s journey has drawn genuine debate. Some viewers see the film as a powerful story of self-determination and liberation. Others argue that framing a woman’s enlightenment primarily through sexual awakening, in a story written by men, undercuts the liberation it claims to celebrate. This is a legitimate conversation, and where you land on it will significantly shape your experience of the film.
Freedom Built From Nothing
The film’s most interesting idea is that Bella, having no societal conditioning, no childhood memories of being told what women should or shouldn’t do, approaches the world with a radical openness that exposes the absurdity of the rules everyone else follows. Her bluntness about desire, her confusion at social hierarchies, her refusal to accept suffering as inevitable: these aren’t signs of naivety but of a mind uncorrupted by convention.
This premise gives Lanthimos license to critique Victorian society and, by extension, contemporary attitudes toward women, class, and bodily autonomy. The satire is broad but effective, and Bella’s progression from object of male fascination to subject of her own story has genuine power. By the film’s end, she’s not the woman anyone designed her to be. She’s the one she built herself.
Should You Watch Poor Things?
If you appreciate bold, visually inventive filmmaking that takes risks with tone, content, and form, Poor Things delivers an experience you won’t find elsewhere. Emma Stone’s performance alone makes it essential viewing. Viewers who are uncomfortable with graphic sexual content, who prefer consistent tonal registers, or who found Lanthimos’s earlier work too cold should approach with caution. This is a film that wants to provoke, delight, and occasionally shock in equal measure, and it does all three with gusto.
The Verdict on Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos has made his most ambitious and emotionally engaging film, a visual feast that’s also a genuine story about what it means to become a person without a template. Emma Stone’s transformative performance deserves every award it received, and the film’s commitment to its own strangeness is refreshing in an era of cautious, focus-grouped filmmaking. Poor Things is too much for some and exactly right for others, which is probably exactly how Lanthimos wants it. It’s messy, excessive, beautiful, and frequently brilliant, a film that insists on being itself and invites you to take it or leave it.