An eighteen year old girl with a horrible secret meets a handsome, brooding man in his early-twenties while on her journey towards self-discovery. Yes, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All probably wins the distinction for being the film on The Midnight Selections that incorporates the most YA fiction tropes, but the hard R the film deservingly got slapped with proves this one wasn’t really meant for the tween and teen crowd. 

In fact, modern horror has a history of producing great films that explore the coming-of-age from interesting, often unique angles. Let the Right One In, Raw and Super Dark Times are all films about young people who have found themselves feeling outside of society, spiraling closer towards an inevitable climactic human tragedy and a bittersweet dénouement.

Which also pretty much holds true for Bones and All as well. 

Based on the novel by Camillie DeAngelis, Bones and All follows Maren (Taylor Russell) after she is abandoned by a father that has had enough of running from the law after her cannibalistic episodes. 

Maren is an Eater- a special breed of people who every-so-often crave human flesh and act out in impulsive, uncontrollable ways if they don’t get it. Their sense of smell is much better than other humans and their condition has essentially turned them into serial killers…but otherwise Eaters aren’t that much different than you or me.

But as Maren learns, that serial killer part is a bit of a curse and it has really messed up the other Eaters she meets on her long road trip to find a mother she has no memory of- one who her father said on cassette was an Eater herself. 

As Maren crosses multiple States in a Reagan-era America, she learns more about her condition. Along the way, she has a chance encounter with a young man named Lee (Timothée Chalamet). At first Lee seems friendly enough, but he is a little reluctant to have a companion. But as the two spend more time together they start thinking that cannibalism might not be something that has to be done alone.

Of course the dangers to this budding romance come in many forms, including the very real possibility that one hungry Eater could turn on the other at any moment. And again, there’s that pesky serial killing keeping them from living a normal life…but who am I to judge?

Though the plot of the film revolves around the relationship between Maren and Lee, the film really is as much about the people they encounter. Because Eaters can smell each other, they can track each other, making it easy to have a private get-together when they cross paths. 

Guadagnino does an excellent job showing how Eaters are mostly damaged people that understand the pain they inflict on others to live. But they are all damaged in different ways and this affects their habits and lifestyle choices. Some try to minimize the hurt by killing only people who seem horrible, killing people who are soon destined to die or committing themselves to an asylum. But all of these efforts at decency still end up having terrible consequences. Others embrace their condition. One even has a groupie…an ordinary human that also likes eating humans even though he doesn’t have too. The world building in Bones and All is so well thought out that it makes me want to read DeAngelis’ novel to see what additional subplots Guadagnino may have had to leave out.

Not that the film isn’t without flaws. I can see some asking what the point of the film is. (Minor spoiler alert.) And I personally was not a fan of Sully’s turn in the final act. It felt like he had changed to keep our positive feelings about the protagonist’s relationship intact. I would have preferred to see the final conflict to come from the protagonists themselves. Even so, the good in this film definitely outweighs the bad. 

And horror fans will appreciate just how brutal the gore can be, even if it is used sparingly. 

Bones and All’s best aspect is its ability to imagine a fictional affliction and then construct a believable sub-culture of people living with this condition. This is a slice-of-life coming-of-age tale about tragic characters forced into hiding their true selves.

Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet are obviously rising stars and Guadagnino has started to make a name for himself with his forays into horror. I’m glad that these very talented people decided to take a chance on this unconventional romance. We need more of these kinds of challenging, genre-bending horror films to push our expectations of what horror is.