With gore as its metaphor for people plagued with an unwanted affliction, “Bones and All” is unflinching and affecting in throwing its richly-drawn characters into realistically rotten circumstances.
The story centers on Maren (Taylor Russell), an 18-year-old girl living a sheltered life with her father in a mobile home after her mother abandons them. Though she attends school, her father keeps close tabs on Maren by not allowing her to hang out with friends- Maren comes straight home and is locked inside her bedroom until morning. Why the over protectiveness? Upon sneaking out of her trailer to visit friends, we learn Maren’s an “eater”- a person drawn to wanting to consume human flesh. After nearly biting off a friend’s finger, Maren’s blood caked visage makes her Daddy wave bye-bye and Maren’s left to fend for herself.
Her father leaves Maren a tape recording to say he’s sorry for giving up on her and clues her into the calamity she’s stricken with. He also leaves Maren her birth certificate which Maren uses to try to find her mother who left long ago. Along the way, she meets other “eaters” who can basically sniff one another out.
The first “eater” she meets is Sully (Mark Rylance), who smells Maren fresh off her first bus stop. Sully takes Maren to a home she quickly deduces is not his when she herself can make out metallic, tangy scents. It’s blood Maren smells from the elderly woman owner dying upstairs. Sully quickly teaches Maren some steps to survival as an “eater” on the run.
The next “eater” Maren encounters is Lee (Timothee Chalamet), a 20-something scavenger who invites innocents to secluded spots, kills them to quench his bloodlust and holes up in their now-empty homes. Maren joins Lee to make her way to where she believes her mother to be. Along the way, more murders and miscreant “eaters” are introduced making “Bones and All” a road movie for the wretched.
Based on the book by Camille DeAngelis, one wonders why the characters aren’t just vampires and be a modern-day “Interview with the Vampire?” Because the supernatural element would kill the film’s universally humanistic appeal by dealing with real people. Though the horror angle’s offbeat, it works because the craving of the “eaters” is inborn- not an addiction they can wean themselves off of. “Bones” is the story of stricken people we can identify with, forced to disengage from society by an innate force they can suppress but not sublimate.
While director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Name,” “Suspiria”) sets “Bones” in the ‘80’s, the movie has more of a ‘70’s road movie feel (think the disengaged drifters in Jerrry Schatzberg’s “Scarecrow”). Given its subjective love story/criminals-on-the-run narrative, “Bones” reminded me more of Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” if you can imagine Kit and Holly actually eating people.
In addition to the aforementioned actors, “Bones and All” features strong support from Michael Stuhlbarg, Jessica Harper and Chloe Sevigny. As Sully, Mark Rylance steals every scene by inhabiting a role the late Harry Dean Stanton would have reveled in given the character’s wild swings between creepiness and quirkiness. “Bones and All” isn’t for everyone- the flesh-eating scenes are admittedly jarring. But for those filmgoers wanting an offbeat excursion to sink their teeth into, the movie’s a fresh take on a time-old tale- the trek of the tortured.