Bones and All

Few films in recent years have felt as disjointed as Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All.

Like a play with a promising first act, the Call Me By Your Name director’s adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’s novel — written by his A Bigger Splash and Suspiria collaborator David Kajganich — lays immensely creepy groundwork as we get to know teenage cannibal Maren (Taylor Russell, Waves).

Along with gradually revealed details about her sheltered existence with her father (André Holland, Moonlight) and the specifics of her condition, the realities of Maren’s bloody existence come into full when fellow flesh-eater Sully (Mark Rylance) literally sniffs her out and educates her in his unsettling ways.

The eerie foundation set, Guadagnino and Kajganich seem to steer the film in an even more promising direction with the addition of Lee (Timothée Chalamet), yet another individual with an alternative diet whose perceived bisexuality furthers the notion of the film being a queer metaphor. And the proverbial net tightens with the addition of two more folks of their ilk, played by none other than Michael Stuhlbarg and Halloween Ends co-writer/director David Gordon Green.

But once Maren fulfills her mission of visiting her long-lost mother, Bones and All takes a noticeable shift, as if Guadagnino let his interns take over the production. The carefully built tension subsides in shockingly quick fashion and the resulting action suggests that the formerly compelling Chalamet is miscast.

Knowing that the ingredients in play were all working well mere minutes before, the film’s empty last hour proves doubly frustrating and the end credits can’t arrive soon enough.

Grade: C. Rated R. Available to rent via Amazon, Apple TV, and other streaming services.

(Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures)