‘Bones and All’: YA Cannibal Road Movie Horrifies, Swoons and Meanders [Review]

Adapting Camille DeAngelis’ novel for the screen, Luca Guadagnino has made an unusual hybrid of romance and horror with “Bones and All.”

This love story between two cannibals traveling the mid-west has Guadagnino re-teaming with his writer David Kajganich (Suspiria) and with very mixed results.

Starring Taylor Russell as Maren, a fine young cannibal, she travels the country in search of answers about her parents, and meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet) a fellow flesh eater who himself seems to be on the run. Why? We’re never really sure and, sadly, although Guadagnino bets his stakes on it, we don’t really care.

Guadagnino’s film is a coming-of-age story set in the ‘80s, which means no cell phones and internet. It brings a freshness to the story as our protagonists navigate middle America via maps. And yet, this is very much a film that reads like a better idea on-paper than on-screen.

There are horror elements in “Bones and All”, but Guadagnino refuses to fully embrace them. The first half is fantastic, and has the most thrilling parts. Before acquainting herself with Lee, Maren meets an assortment of shady characters including creepy Sully (a scene-chewing Mark Rylance), a cannibal who grows a strange obsession over her.

Russell’s depiction of Maren captures the innocence of the character, her performance is beautifully tender and vulnerable, and restrained. I had barely heard of the actress before this movie, but she’s got the chops to continue leading other films.

As for Chalamet, he’s basically playing a variation of all the other soft-spoken characters he’s known for. There’s nothing outstanding or revelatory here — his work isn’t fully-fleshed out enough to make us care about the romance, which Guadagnino heavily focuses on in the second half.

Watching this movie I kept telling myself, “gee, there sure are a lot of cannibals in the midwest and they all seem to bump into each other. There is no answer to this implausibility, although Guadagnino seems to hint that they can smell each other from a certain distance. Alas, either you go along with the implausibilities in this film, or you don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s tension-filled moments, especially those involving Rylance’s Sully, but the build-up basically amounts to nothing. There’s an artificial texture to “Bones and All”, which makes it feel rather empty. It’s in essence a road movie about two youngsters trying to find themselves with little sense of discovery. An arthouse road movie that just happens to feature cannibalism.

The cannibalism is depicted in a very matter-of-fact way via a plot that can certainly meander. Perhaps, if the film were shorter, this would not be such a problem, but Guadagnino is really pushing it here at 130 minutes. It all leads to an all-too-predictable resolution that could be seen from a mile away. [B-/C+]