If you’ve lingered on social media long enough, you’ve probably met the new prophets of paranoia. Their sermons range from Tucker Carlson’s cabal of hummus eaters to Candace Owens’s theory that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent, to COVID-19 vaccines laced with mind control. Conspiracies aren’t new, but in an age where outrage is monetized and engagement equals credibility, delusion has gone more mainstream than ever.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, his latest collaboration with Emma Stone, asks what makes such fantasies so alluring — and when exactly delusion curdles into danger.