
Bones and All
By Joyce Slaton,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Chalamet stars in edgy, intense, ultra-gory book adaptation.

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Bones and All
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What's the Story?
Directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) and based on the same-named book by Camille DeAngelis, BONES AND ALL introduces viewers to Maren (Taylor Russell), whose life is in tumult due to her irresistible impulse to eat human flesh. As she travels through the United States searching for her estranged mother (Chloë Sevigny), Maren meets up with Lee (Timothée Chalamet), a man who shares her taboo compulsion. Driven to kill and to cannibalize, can these two find a way to live with their urges and move forward into a less horrific future?
Is It Any Good?
By turns romantic, delicate, terrifying, and positively nauseating, this book-based horror romance is an unsettling yet strangely beautiful cinematic experience that lingers. Many viewers are likely to have seen "young murderers on the run" dramas (Badlands, Bonnie and Clyde) and romantic films with the undead in love (Twilight, Warm Bodies), but both of those subgenres generally tone down the violence in favor of longing gazes and tender kisses. But in Bones and All, the youthful main characters meet-cute directly after one of them has waited all night for a woman to die on the floor of her bedroom before bloodily chomping her nude torso.
It's hard to know how to take the contrasts, which seesaw back and forth throughout the film. Maren is on a search for her estranged mother (relatable), and every few days she enriches her diner-food diet with raw, recently dead human flesh (not so relatable). Lee, a lonely soul who's been cast out of his family and home without a friend (pitiable), murders passing strangers in the town he wanders through (yikes). The chemistry between Russell and Chalamet is palpable, and both are given strong, sympathetic roles that are literally meaty in every way. In some moments, you may find yourself wanting nothing more than for these two to cast off their bloody practices and continue drifting romantically from one beautiful empty American vista to another. At other moments, viewers will understandably recoil in horror and disgust. Those with weaker stomachs may even tap out. But those who can take it may find this curious artifact of a film uniquely beguiling, a carnal romance in every sense of that word.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the violence in Bones and All, which is quite intense, especially for a movie that also has themes of romance and self-actualization. Did the amount of violence surprise you? Did it turn you off the film completely?
The movie's tone varies more than most, which tend to stick to a single genre: horror, romance, comedy, etc. Which tones are found in Bones and All? Do the comic and romantic moments make the horrifying ones more horrifying?
How do you think viewers are supposed to feel about Maren and Lee? Are we supposed to relate to them? Like them? Despise them? Pity them? A mixture of all of these emotions? How does the filmmaker evoke these feelings and signal characters' motivations and inner life?
If you've read the book the movie was based on, how do the two compare? Which do you prefer, and why?
Movie Details
- In theaters: November 18, 2022
- On DVD or streaming: December 13, 2022
- Cast: Timothée Chalamet , Taylor Russell , Mark Rylance
- Director: Luca Guadagnino
- Inclusion Information: Gay directors, Middle Eastern/North African directors, Female actors, Black actors
- Studios: United Artists Releasing , Warner Bros.
- Genre: Romance
- Topics: Book Characters
- Run time: 130 minutes
- MPAA rating: R
- MPAA explanation: strong, bloody and disturbing violent content, language throughout, some sexual content and brief graphic nudity
- Last updated: October 30, 2023
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