SPOILERS AHEAD
If 2022 can be defined by one genre, it’s horror. Across blockbuster and indie alike, the shades of gore, tension and camp that make up this one category of film have shown up in almost every major release this year. To extremely positive results for the most part, might I add. But every year must have a disappointment, and for me, it’s ‘Bones and All’.
Before I get into the review proper, I want to emphasise that I went in with high hopes and no expectations in regard to content. I hadn’t seen more than a short teaser and the poster before buying my ticket. Part of the fun of movies has been stolen from me recently by having major expectations based of marketing materials, so once I know something interesting is coming, I kind of just ignore it until it’s time to watch. If I didn’t have Twitter, I wouldn’t have even known ‘TÁR’ was about a composer.
When I describe the plot of this film, know that all of it hit me for the first time when I sat down in the theatre. There was very little pre-conceived for me in terms of the plot. All I knew was that there was some sort of romance or relationship, and some level of cannibalism. I didn’t even realise it was a period piece.
This story follows Maren (Taylor Russel), a high school student who, via some genetic disposition, hungers for human flesh. When her father abandons her following an incident at a sleepover, she begins the journey to find her mother. On her travels she learns there are others like her, and including an obsessive stranger named Sully (Mark Rylance), and a young man dressed like Harry Styles named Lee (Timothée Chalamet). The younger two bond over their shared hunger and traumas, find more like them, and eventually try to live a normal life. When Lee is fatally stabbed, he requests that Maren eat him, “bones and all”. She does.
The film can be understood as three threads:
· Maren is abandoned by her family.
· Maren is stalked by Sully.
· Maren and Lee fall in love.
They’re all weaved in together with themes of abandonment and addiction. All of the central characters struggle with their hunger for human flesh, and their conflicting desire for real connection. When Sully is abandoned by Maren, he follows her across state lines, as Maren does when she returns to Lee. When Sully finally returns for a second time and attacks Maren, he manages to isolate her all over again by causing Lee’s death. It’s a theoretically tragic but beautiful story.
Unfortunately, it’s also 2 hours long and suffers accordingly.
I know this film has a lot of hype and a stan culture has already latched on to it. People really love this movie. That makes sense. ‘Bones and All’ stars three incredibly talented actors, two of which are young and rising stars who are both beautiful on screen. Rylance gets the campy, weird role, but Russel in particular shines as an awkward, increasingly bitter young woman who rightfully feels abandoned. There’s a quiet vulnerability to her performance that manages not to feel simpering.
Between the two romantic leads there’s chemistry apparent. Russel and Chalamet play off of each other incredibly well. But outside of that, everyone seems very game to tackle this strange premise. That helps sell the bad script. So much relies on the viewer connecting with the performances, and you do. Mostly.
Chalamet is one of the screen’s best young talents. From ‘Dune’ (2021) to ‘Little Women’ (2019), his resume is him going from one strength to another, and much of this film feels built to showcase his flair for sensitivity. He can be playful and bright, which contrasts well against his ability to go dead behind the eyes. It’s an incredibly natural performance. And again, Russel makes a perfect screen partner for him. The two communicate entire mountains in a single glance
But this film does also feature dialogue.
The script isn’t obviously bad. Nothing that at first glance is especially clunky line to line. I can be honest when I say that. But so much of the movie is built on scattered repetition (a fault that I can only blame on runtime) that you just wish it would sit still for a moment and let the acting and scenario do the heavy lifting. But instead it feels unfocused in a way that is clearly intentional but, for me, extremely frustrating.
It’s a road trip movie, and I appreciate that movement over momentum is the game here. But so much time is wasted signposting. Sometimes literally, in the case of the increasingly common state indicators and other titles that flash on the screen. It kind of makes the movie you’re watching read like some expensive, boring vlog from a travel influencer at certain moments. I’m barely being hyperbolic.
‘Bones and All’ is also gory.
The feeding scenes require the actors to chew and bite on these fake corpses, covered and blood and surrounded by flies. It’s necessitated by the premise, but I do feel the need to reference it as both a triumph and a failure. If the crux of the film is the juxtaposition between horror and romance, it does much to contrast these two elements. Golden lit fields of and gothic feedings with high contrast shadows. The carnival sequence in particular stands out in how well the horror, sex and humanity at play are woven together so tightly. I’m not usually a gore person, but I don’t want to take away from what was visually effective here.
When it gets scary and gross, it does that very well.
However, the final scene requires a marriage between the blood and the romance. For some, the image of a screaming Chalamet and nibbling Russel, covered in blood, might be the cherry on top of a creepy love affair. Romeo and Juliet but cannibals and poor. But I’d make the argument that it fails in making the final feeding scene feel romantic. Maybe it’s an impossible task. And no, cutting to the two topless doesn’t help. In fact, I think it’s actually a cop out to the goal of the scene.
To put it plainly, the film reiterates again and again that eating someone “bones and all” is the ultimate high. Lee, who has done so before, is regularly framed as a junkie. Maren spends the entire film begging for support, help, guidance - demanding that someone just make her feelings make sense. I understand the goal of giving her a chance to do this consensually within the plot of the film.
But in it’s own logic, this is her boyfriend offering her an opportunity to get the highest she’s ever been, and then leave her completely alone. She will 100% satisfy her cravings - the hunger inside. In the home they built to escape these cravings. But if the point is for this moment to be grotesque in both visual and thematic context, it doesn’t communicate that. The final shot of them together is almost a distraction from what we’re actually watching. Audiences clearly aren’t reading the ending as sad for the reasons I’ve outlined, evident by countless Letterboxd reviews.
But the movie gave me plenty of free time to overthink things.
To reiterate the point, the film is two hours long. The shift at the half hour mark (roughly – I didn’t bring a stopwatch!), where she meets Lee, is where the story actually begins. Did we need to see her father abandon her? Or her meet Sully? So much time is wasted in the first half of the film stating and restating irrelevant/superfluous information, or establishing themes that are better explored later.
You could cut nearly a third of the film out and it would only become more effective.
That’s ultimately the film’s fundamental flaw – so much of this feels overwritten, or at least, under-edited. It’s nice that the world of “eaters” has been thought out so thoroughly, but the audience doesn’t need it to be so thoroughly expanded upon. We could gather, when she sniffs him out behind the shop, that she can smell really good, without Sully explaining she can do that.
The innate horror of desiring to eat your fellow man, juxtaposed with young love, that’s enough of a hook. But instead, the movie wants you to see every last step of this journey. We see her run to the bus, where the knife lands, how she sleeps in an old woman’s home. I haven’t read the book this is based upon, but this feels like a possible issue of adaptation. There is uneasy tightrope that keeps a film like this from feeling aimless that is just not well handled.
The goal is intimacy, but it lands more at redundancy.
If I can end on a positive note, I’m quite willing to revisit this in 6 months. ‘Bones and All’ isn’t the type of film that I truly HATED, it’s just one that I don’t get the hype for. Its good qualities do not out-weigh the bad. Not all movies are for everyone, and for the sheer gall of what this is, I respect it. But I don’t like it and I didn’t enjoy a significant chunk of my viewing experience.
I don’t usually do stars at the end, but take this as a 2/5.