‘Bones And All’ Rips Out Your Heart and Takes A Bite [Review]
Mary Beth McAndrews
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Horror fans love a cannibal movie. Something about the taboo depravity of consuming human flesh scratches a strange, primordial part of brains that subconsciously wishes to go feral. While the cannibal is an oft-navigated topic in terms of gore and abjection, cannibalism is also used as a deeper metaphor. With films such as Julia Ducournau’s Raw, Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day, and even Antonia Bird’s Ravenous, cannibalism transcends gory spectacle into discussions of consumption, rage, and burning desire.
Now, Luca Guadagnino wants to offer his subversion of the human-eating horror trope with his new film Bones and All. And subvert it he does, with his road movie meets coming-of-age love story meets abject horror. With a script by David Kajganich, Guadagnino orchestrates a beautiful symphony about found family, survival, and bone-achingly deep love.
Bones and All centers on Maren, played by the incredible Taylor Russell who’s previously been in the Escape Room films. She’s a teenager who’s floated from town to town on the east coast with her father Frank (Andre Holland) due to her affliction, which is a taste for human flesh. Despite her father’s best efforts, it’s impossible for Maren to truly avoid her true nature. He tries to lock her away from the world and keep others safe, but he can’t contain her.
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After she sneaks away to a sleepover, she tears the flesh off a friend’s finger at a sleepover. This launches the transient duo into another run for their lives. Now, Frank is leaving Maren. In a tape he leaves behind, he explains that he just can’t take care of her anymore. Maren is abandoned and alone, left with nothing but a birth certificate and the name of a mother she’s never met.
Thus begins Maren’s journey across the United States to get to Minnesota where her mother may still be living. Along the way, she meets Sully (Mark Rylance), a solitary man who reveals to her that she is not in fact alone. There are many more people like her, and they call themselves “feeders”. Now Maren is truly embarking on a journey to not only discover her past, but to better understand her own existence and how she fits into the world.
From here, Bones And All flows like a series of vignettes with the new people who come and go, or sometimes stay, in Maren’s life. During her travels, she meets a handsome feeder named Lee (Timothee Chalamet) who harbors his own secrets. Chalamet, as always, charms with his suave smirk and command of his physicality. Maren and Lee quickly fall in love as they share their lives with one another, seeing each other as a buoy in a flesh-filled storm of hunger and loneliness.
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While their love flourishes on screen, they still encounter a slew of dangers in the form of other feeders and close calls when looking for their next meal. Even in the quiet and sweetest moments of Bones And All are imbued with a sense of danger; safety is just a smoke screen, a fleeting feeling that is as impossible to grasp as a plume of smoke. Maren and Lee must cling to each other and their rusted truck for protection. One such danger is Michael Stuhlbarg’s Jake, a feeder the couple encounters on their journey to Minnesota.
As they sit around the fire, sharing beers, Jake shares his love for eating people and especially eating them “bones and all”. Here, that means eating every last part of a person, quite literally bones and all. His chilling stare and too-excited smile make him feel like a shark circling in the water. Even though he claims he comes in peace, he oozes evil. This scene is short and Stuhlbarg only has a few minutes of screen time. But, he relishes those precious minutes to create one of the year’s most bone-chilling characters.
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Russell is the beating, aching heart of Bones and All. She is quiet, but strong, appearing timid but actually brimming with strength. Even though she has been kept away from the world, she’s not afraid of it. Maren isn’t afraid to walk up to Lee and introduce herself. She isn’t afraid to run away from Sully when the internal alarm bells ring. Russell is an utter force here, not only imbuing Maren with strength, but also with humanity. She isn’t just a cannibal. She’s a human being who just wants to live a normal life and find people who will love her no matter what. In the moments where she breaks and screams at the unfairness of it all, it feels like Russell’s actual heart is shattering.
Bones And All isn’t just a cannibal movie. It isn’t just a coming-of-age story. It’s something special, an alluring concoction of horrific imagery, intimacy, and longing that creates perhaps the most heartfelt story about cannibalism ever committed to screen. But again, while cannibalism is a pillar of Bones And All, this isn’t about cannibalism. Instead, the consumption of human flesh hums in the background like a swarm of distant, yet threatening mosquitos. What comes to the forefront is a desire for love, belonging, and understanding, and what happens when you can’t grapple with that desire. It exists in that space in your chest closely guarded by bone, muscle, tissue, and years of trauma.
And yet Guadagnino is able to worm his way into that space with both care and violence, reminding you of what it’s like to fall in love and have that love ripped away from you. Bones and All is a triumph of deeply emotional filmmaking about taboo subject matter that more directors should strive for.
Summary
Bones and All is a triumph of deeply emotional filmmaking about taboo subject matter that more directors should strive for.
