The soundtrack of Bugonia: Creating a musical score in a vacuum

One of my favourite films of 2025 was undoubtedly Bugonia, an uncomfortable questioning as to whether or not the fear of aliens is simply true xenophobia and the fear of the unknown, or whether we are merely frightened of the possibility that they might have the same capacity for malice and violence that humans do.

However, the atmosphere and tone of the film were built upon the foundation of something all great films have, that being an amazing musical score.

Music News Blitz writer Isaac James expands. 

A uniquely constructed soundtrack

Bugonia greatly benefited from having an exceptional soundtrack.

Upon doing further research, I noticed that Bugonia’s musical score was curated in a very unique way.

Fendrix (the composer) did not actually see the scenes in which his work would be featured; instead, he was handed a mere three words to write an entire musical score with: bees, basement and spaceship.

The bees in the film serve to encapsulate the mindset of a worker, someone who fades into obscurity as they scramble and devote themselves to a higher being, the dreaded CEO. 

Bees represent a collective that strives towards a common goal, with productivity being the thread that weaves thousands upon thousands of people together, their identities overlapping and their personhood being obscured beneath the waves of sweat and labour that lap over them. 

The bees are selfless, organised and efficient as a collective, but the concept of their existence on an individual level simply does not exist.

The film’s soundtrack opens with a track aptly titled “Bees,” a song that is serene and orchestral. 

The song has a choir that waxes and wanes, their voices literally weaving in and out of obscurity as they softly sing, a contrast to the building tension that rises towards the end of the piece. 

The texture of the song grows uncomfortably packed and claustrophobic, reminiscent to thousands of bees closely packed together in a single hive. It lays the foreground of the film, peacefulness, and the status quo. 

Bees and collapse

The bees are in tandem, and thus equilibrium remains; it is only when the bees overreach and attempt to ascend from their station that the harmony is broken, that colony collapse ensues. 

The final piece in the soundtrack is an imitation of “Bees” entitled “CCD”, a reference to the phenomenon of “Colony Collapse Disorder” that is constantly mistified and treated as the anarchic end to a civilisation, perhaps bees, perhaps humanity itself. 

Where “Bees” takes a long time to reach the point in the song where the melody is laced with dread, “CCD” swiftly begins to abrase its own harmonic components. 

The music is warped and distorted, as the serenity once maintained implodes. The track falls from a major key to a minor one, losing its heavenly and hymnal adjacent sound, becoming unsettling and dreadful. 

The system breaks down, the bees stop working, and the cycle of production no longer works. 

The latter half of the song, while still suffering from that same eerier undercurrent of string instruments that reverberate unflinchingly, slowly begins to ascend to the original peace of the “Bees” track.

The status quo

However, not because the colony starts anew, but because the colony stopped altogether. 

In real instances of colony collapse disorder, the worker bees will simply leave their hive; I believe this restoration of peace in the song attempts to demonstrate that the equilibrium lost in the original system breaking down was ultimately what paved the way for a new method of peace to follow, that being the simple act of non-existence. 

The society no longer exists, and so neither shall the harm it causes or the infighting that broke it down in the first place.

The bees represent the status quo, harmony and peace. A peace that is fragile and delicate, easily shattered under the foot of any “bee” that chooses to step out of line, or off the corporate ladder.

“Basement”

The second word that Jerskin Fendrix was given to work with was “Basement”, the environment the majority of the film takes place in. 

The basement encapsulates the depths of the main character’s psyche and where his depravity is actively displayed, fittingly, within the depths of his home. 

It is reclusive and open, a place where his humanity is tested with no walls to hide behind. 

The “Basement” track encapsulates this perfectly, with an electronic basis to contrast the orchestral composition of the songs categorised under representing the bees. 

The song is constantly pushed by a percussive drumming in the background that does not cease, its constant panging akin to blood racing from the heart, or the pulsing sensation of adrenaline. 

As the song continues, we begin to experience a pushing and pulling effect between the electronic components of the song and the fleeting strings and woodwind sounds. 

The shifting dominance of each musical family symbolises the battle of wills that takes place in the basement and the suspenseful undertones serve as a reminder of just how threatening the basement and everything that occurs within it is to the parties that find themselves within it, albeit for differing reasons. 

The song finalises with a loud, orchestral crescendo, unapologetic and polarised compared to the more subtle aggressions that had underpinned the rest of the score. 

If the beginning and middle of the “Basement” were passive-aggressive comments and insults whispered under one’s breath, the finale is the boiling point of anger and hate, a screaming match, and an outpouring of sheer disdain.

Moreover, if bees represent the peace of conformity and the basement represents the evil hidden away in the depths of the common man, then the “Spaceship” represents a transcendence of both earthly concepts. 

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“Spaceship”

The spaceship is the theme that embodies the characters having their own flaws and ideals of the world completely shattered; nobody in the film is free from the state of metamorphosis, and thus, by the finale, has their previous life discarded in favour of new philosophies. 

The spaceship is renewal, a perspective from which Earth can be viewed in its entirety, and the very quiet and lonely song that shares its name embodies this. 

“Spaceship” is barely a song by all conventional means; early into its beginning, the sound of a blaring alarm can be heard before dissipating in and out of obscurity. 

Small chiming sounds ring and chirp, underscored by a howling instrument. There is no rhythm, no melody, no crescendo. 

It is a collection of sounds, the silence of space encapsulated. It is the loneliest song on the soundtrack, a melancholic farewell to the bees and the basement as their buzzing dies down and the characters ascend from being underground to soaring among celestial expanses.

The lasting impact of Bugonia’s score

The soundtrack of Bugonia was curated in a way that makes it potent, and at some points, so very bold and powerful that it almost feels unfitting for the scenes that they are in.

But I think that the sharp rising and falling in energy that the music delivers really adds to the charm of the film. 

It is turbulent, dangerous, and violent, and, in the end, gently delivered to a state of tranquillity. 

The film’s dynamics and flair were elevated heavily by its score, and I am interested to see if its unique musical curation method will be explored in future projects.

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