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● Movie Guide · Last updated May 18, 2026

Poor Things: Plot, Cast, Ending & Where to Watch

2023 · Ireland · Science Fiction, Romance, Comedy · 2h 21m · English

Poor Things is a 2023 Ireland science fiction film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. This guide covers the plot, full cast, an overview of the ending, where to watch, and similar films you might want next.

Read Ending Explained → Movies Like Poor Things Where to Watch
Science FictionRomanceEditorial pick
Original Title
Poor Things
Director
Yorgos Lanthimos
Writers
Tony McNamara
Country
Ireland
Runtime
2h 21m
Release
Dec 7, 2023
§ 01 Plot · 6 min read

Poor Things Plot Summary

Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer is a novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, published in 1992. It won the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize the same year.

● Quick takeaway

Poor Things (2023) is a Ireland science fiction film, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, running 141 minutes. Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation. Stars Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo. Critical reception: IMDb 7.7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 92%, Metacritic 88/100. Tagline: "She’s nothing like you’ve ever seen.." This guide covers the plot, full cast, ending, and where to watch.

§ 02 Cast · 6 roles

Cast and Characters

Emma Stone headshot
as Bella Baxter
Stone won her second Academy Award for the work she does here — a performance that has to physically scale from infant motor control through adolescence into worldly adulthood across the same body. The casting reuses her Favourite-era collaboration with Lanthimos but pushes much further: she handles slapstick, sex comedy, and philosophical seriousness in the same scene, and the entire film depends on the audience trusting her body to be both old and new at once.
Mark Ruffalo headshot
Mark Ruffalo
as Duncan Wedderburn
Ruffalo delivers what may be the broadest comic performance of his career as Duncan, a self-styled lothario who is humiliated, in real time, by his own inability to keep up with the woman he thought he was seducing. The earned-male-anguish moan he develops over the course of the Continental tour earned the film its biggest laughs and an Oscar nomination, and it is unrecognisable from the Avengers-era Ruffalo most audiences arrived with.
Willem Dafoe headshot
as Godwin Baxter
Dafoe plays Bella's surgeon-creator-father from under heavy prosthetic scarring, and the performance has to do double duty as Frankenstein's monster and Frankenstein's gentlest possible inheritor. The film treats him as Bella's first moral problem: a man who loves her and who built her, in that order, and whose claim on her life is the one she has to outgrow. Dafoe plays the tension at a register of weary affection that gives the film its emotional anchor.
Ramy Youssef headshot
Ramy Youssef
as Max McCandles
Youssef brings the slow, decent watchfulness of his television work to Max, the young medical student Godwin hires to chart Bella's development and who ends up loving her without trying to own her. The performance functions as the film's quietest argument — that the right way to love a woman who has just begun to think for herself is to wait, and to be honest, and to let her come back if she comes back at all.
Christopher Abbott headshot
Christopher Abbott
as Alfie Blessington
Abbott arrives late in the film as Alfie, the rigid military husband from the life Bella does not remember, and the casting is a tonal switch — the goofier registers of the Continental tour give way to something colder. Abbott plays the character as a man who genuinely cannot imagine a woman who is not property, and the contrast with the household Bella has built for herself by the closing act is what gives the third reel its political teeth.
Suzy Bemba headshot
Suzy Bemba
as Toinette
Bemba's Toinette enters the Paris section as a co-worker and lover at the brothel, and she becomes the first character to hand Bella a coherent political vocabulary — a socialist reading of the labour she is doing — to go with the bodily and emotional ones she has been collecting. The performance is calm, sceptical, and warm in a way that makes the brothel sequences feel like a real apprenticeship rather than a Lanthimos provocation.
§ 03 · Spoiler Zone · Read with care

Ending Overview

How does Poor Things end? Our spoiler-aware breakdown walks through the final act beat by beat — including the choices, motivations, and ambiguous final shot that viewers most often debate.

Read full Ending Explained →
§ 04 Watch · Updated May 18

Where to Watch Poor Things

Availability may vary by region and change over time.

A
Amazon Video
Rent
● Available
A
Apple TV Store
Rent
● Available
G
Google Play Movies
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● Available
Y
YouTube
Rent
● Available
View all regions & options →
§ 06

Frequently Asked

What is Poor Things about?

Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents.

Where can I watch Poor Things?

See the Where to Watch section below for the current streaming, rental, and purchase options in your region.