Luca Guadagnino delivers an unsettling journey across rural 1990s America with a chilling premise and question of morality when you’ve been cursed with cannibalistic instincts.
Bones and All
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Starring Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, and Mark Rylance
Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Synopsis
Content Warning: Cannibalism
(I won’t get into too much details regarding the specific scenes, will only make mention where I need to.)
Based on the YA novel by Camille DeAngelis, Bones and All (2022) follows the story of Maren (Taylor Russell) as a young teenager who’s discovered that she has a desire to eat humans and learns that she has been doing so since she was very young. Left to fend for herself after her father can no longer cover for her crimes, Maren travels to find her birth mother and, along the way, encounters other “eaters” like herself, in potential wiseman Sully (Mark Rylance) and wayward Lee (Timothée Chalamet).
Confounding Moral Question
Bones and All isn’t trying to make you sympathetic towards Maren’s plight as a cannibal or glorify the twisted underworld she and other cannibals exist in. Far from it, the film presents their curse tragically as they realize they will ultimately hurt everyone around them. It makes the protagonists, Maren and Lee, wrestle with this thought:
Credit: MGM Pictures
How can you have deep connections with the rest of the human world when there’s always a chance that your cravings could hurt them?
This cannibalistic instinct feels more grounded than the vampire parallels it calls upon. With most vampire movies the past few decades, there’s usually been a sympathetic character cursed with the immortality of vampirism that chooses to eat animals (Twilight) or take a serum (Blade). While these blunt the impact of their cravings, both narratives show us how this fraught arrangement makes their relationships strained or hangs a severe risk over everyone they come in contact with.
For the “Eaters” in Bones and All (their in-universe name for a cannibal among the community), they have a similar conflict though they don’t even get the fringe benefit of immortality (though this isn’t always a good thing as also portrayed in various immortality narratives). Many in the spot choose to consume animals or only eat humans they feel have wronged humanity in some way. In this way, Bones borrows the moral conflict of vampire movies while giving characters like Maren and Lee a small purpose akin to the Showtime TV series Dexter (2006-13), whose main character has cravings to kill and uses his position in law enforcement to choose guilty targets and satisfy his needs.
An Eater’s Love Story
Bones shows us a complicated love journey through two threads: Maren’s abandonment by her father and attempting to find her mother, while Lee fails continuously to be there for his younger sister.
With Maren’s father (played by Andre Holland), we see how much it broke his heart to leave her alone, as he genuinely believed it wasn’t her fault. But he had reached a point where he could no longer put himself through her tendencies and the damage it caused. Though he leaves the film early on, we get to hear his perspective regularly through the use of a cassette tape that Maren listens to throughout her journey. It ends up being a solid narrative device to keep him involved without being intrusive, usually paired with a moment where Maren is facing her strongest conflict or deflated from another failure.
On the other end, Lee desperately wants to be there for his sister, but the mysterious nature of how he left his home in Kentucky presents several complications. His sister Kayla (played by Anna Cobb) doesn’t understand this and just wants her brother home, and Lee does his best to be involved where he can, though his mother is furiously against any chance of him returning home. This tension comes to a head as Maren and Lee are trying to forge a life together and potentially get more involved in Kayla’s life, bringing up the central question:
Credit: MGM Pictures
Can “eaters” truly live among humans?
As the narrative evolves into a romantic one with Lee and Maren: if they can co-exist with humans, can they actually fall in love? Will there be ramifications for exploring a life together?
Without spoiling it, they show tremendous growth as a couple and as individuals, confronted by a final problem that will test or entirely obliterate what they’ve built together. What may make you the most uncomfortable is how much you’ll like Maren and Lee by the end, given everything you know about them and what you’ve witnessed them do. While Bones is surprisingly not as graphic as it could be (but trust me, there’s still some scenes that will make you wince), the knowledge of what they have done can leave you feeling unsettled for hours (and, in my case, years) after you’ve completed watching. Yet, you can’t help but hope for their success as they try to live better lives. That’s the hallmark of well-written characters and the mixture of great performances from Russell and Chalamet, building some great chemistry that pays dividends in the final act.
1990s America Revisited
While I’m sad I didn’t get to chat about this film when it came out, recent movies that have been turning their focus on the 1990s have really made the choices in this film stand out upon a rewatch. Guadagnino borrows the classic cross-country journeys you would see popularized in the 1970s and 80s and updates them. If Terrance Malick’s Badlands (1973) met Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs), set in the 1990s, then you could probably get a stylistic sense of what Bones offers.
Credit: MGM Pictures
The characters’ clothing could easily work in another decade like the 70s or 80s, but it’s key to note who’s clothing reflects that. Maren and Lee certainly register as late 80s, 90s kids being thrown out the house to figure it out on their own. However, the supporting characters / antagonist like Mark Rylance’s Sully and duo Jake and Brad (Michael Stuhlbarg and David Gordon Green) show their age, with clothing and vernacular choices that show they are stuck in the time they are ostracized from their regular communities.
Credit: MGM Pictures
The other visual clue that we get is through the towns and vehicles that Maren and Lee encounter during their trip across the Midwest. We see rundown rural towns frozen in time, Cadillacs and GM vehicles that scream 1990s box designs with a mixture of older trucks and buses serving well past their time. All of these clues help blend the characters into their underground lives, being pushed out from the nicer parts of town, from the progressive and flashy capitalistic highlights we came to expect from the 90s. There’s no kids playing SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) on their TVs, checking out the mall, or roller skating with your friends. All of those happier cues we’d expect from a typical Mighty Ducks movie are completely eroded and out of reach, yet exist within the same continuity.
Our characters don’t necessarily long for that uber-capitalist, carefree version of America: they are aware it exists but have found avenues and paths to exist outside the law, outside the spotlight of pop culture. If anything, for Maren and Lee, they would be content to just exist in those spaces, regardless if they are truly invested in the dream of the 90s.
Conclusion / Recommendation
Bones and All will surprisingly make you deeply connected to Maren and Lee’s love story as they experience every high and low, and you’re left wondering how you started rooting for the cannibals.
Most horror fans will likely love it but the casual fan should be prepared. If you’re squeamish, even though the film isn’t as graphic as you may imagine, it’s still got plenty of cannibalistic implications that you may be surprised by.
Score: 8.3 out of 10
- 90s America- 8
- Luca Guadagnino crafts a visually rich picture of America through dilapidated towns and ruined neighborhoods frozen in time
- Deep Moral Conflict- 8
- You know you’re in for a great story when the characters have a complicated issue to process that also makes the audience feel conflicted in how they engage with them.
- Russell, Chalamet, and Rylance- 9
- Russell and Chalamet’s chemistry will make you believe in cannibalistic love, while Rylance’s Sully will creep the bejesus out of you and then some.
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