‘Bones and All’ Review: Luca Guadagnino’s head-spinning horror meets limp love story
It says a lot about my intolerance of Timothée Chalamet that I passed out in my seat during a recent press screening of Bones and All before he’d even arrived on screen.
Now, I’ve been known to faint in the past (I have a habit of passing out in libraries and frozen food sections; don’t ask me why), but I’ve never found myself slumped in my seat 20 minutes into a horror film. The cause of my momentary lapse of consciousness? If I’m being totally honest, it’s probably because Guadagnino’s latest offering boasts several visceral depictions of cannibalism, something my poor oxygen-starved brain can’t handle. Obviously, I told my girlfriend it was low blood sugar. That way, I got to eat all the peanut M&Ms.
Bones and All is bookended by scenes in which Maren Yearly – tenderly portrayed by newcomer Taylor Russell – is seen quenching a forbidden hunger. That first taste of human flesh, the first we see at least, is a total surprise. On the other hand, her final devouring feels like the climax of an inevitable ride towards annihilation. It’s the 1980s, which ought to be significant but rarely is.
After letting her hunger get the better of her, Maren runs back to the temporary abode she shares with her father. High on her victims’ blood, she cleans the murky stains from her neck while he packs their things into a duffel bag. This will be the last time they go through this all-too-familiar ritual. On the morning of her 18th birthday, Maren’s father disappears, leaving only a fistful of dollars and a tape explaining the history of her affliction.
After partaking in a midnight feast courtesy of Mark Rylance’s head-spinningly unnerving Sully – a shadowy figure who haunts her until the very end – Maren meets a wafer-thin drifter called Lee. Together, they hit the road, rutting and murdering their way through the landscapes of the Old West. On the way, Maren discovers that Lee, despite his charms, is even more screwed up than she is and that the world of “eaters” is indeed a dark one, full to the brim with flesh aficionados dressed like truckers.
Guadgnino should be applauded for offering up a film that will surprise even the most jaded cinemagoer. I had assumed Bones and All would be some Gen Z road trip movie smattered with Kensington gore. As it turns out, it is far more nuanced than that. Sadly, for all its thematic complexity, Bones and All failed to disprove my belief that Timothée Chalamet has the on-screen presence of a Shitake mushroom.
Of course, the biggest problem with this warped love story is that it sets itself a near-impossible challenge: to paint everyone as worthy of love, no matter how monstrous they might seem. Of course, this would have been much easier to achieve had Guadignino crafted a love story potent enough to override the monstrosity of his characters, who, on the whole, are entirely unlovable.
Even Maren, the abandoned underdog, whose sensitivity to the suffering of others makes her yearning for flesh all the more unwieldy, is a dead fish so desperate for love that she is willing to flop about after Lee when it’s clear he is a sadistic killer with a talent for emotional blackmail. That isn’t to say I was expecting Bones and All to boast a cast of likeable role models; it’s just that Gudagnino’s failure to inspect his character’s motivations drains the film of its thematic weight like pus from an abscess.
