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Bones and All Reviews

Bones and All is an exceptional victory of cinema and is destined to become an instant coming-of-age classic.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 17, 2024

Combining tones and artistic choices that have no right to be together, yet dazzle in spite of this, Guadagnino has created something harrowing and heart-wrenching, but also spellbindingly gorgeous.

Full Review | Jul 15, 2024

Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino stays true to the themes of Camille DeAngelis’ book of the same name — and makes a convincing case to extend your love and sympathy to two forlorn teenagers stuck in a rickety car on the roads of ‘80s America.

Full Review | Jun 10, 2024

While unflinching in depicting consumption of people, Guadagnino humanizes the victims by using sequences of still shots of their belongings to reflect their lives. People are more than the moment that we cross their path

Full Review | Jun 8, 2024

There is a lot to chew on here, about people who feel disenfranchised, unloved and unwanted. The ending may disappoint, but it also ensures the film will have a life as an imperfect masterpiece, the best kind of cult film, after all.

Full Review | Sep 19, 2023

Guadagnino lights up every scene in the movie with breathtaking visuals that navigate the push and pull of the love story.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

Desire and danger are two sides of the same coin in Bones And All, a blood-soaked romance that juxtaposes the yearning for touch with the craving for flesh. It’s a cannibal love story that tugs at the heart, even as its characters go for the jugular.

Full Review | Aug 18, 2023

Bones and All is a compelling story that can be best enjoyed when consumed in its metaphorical state.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 8, 2023

Bones and All comes tantalizingly close to being an effective arterial-spray gothic romance, but it too often feels like an empty exercise in style.

Full Review | Aug 1, 2023

A fable that intertwines tenderness with the horrifying.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 25, 2023

At times “Bones and All” is heartbreaking and seductive, but even if you know going in that it’s about cannibalism, the movie is still wildly disgusting.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Bones and All is a deeply humanistic story of impossible love as two drifters search for their idea of home.

A near perfect slice of life romantic road trip film involving two cannibals. Beautiful, horrific, creepy, but all at the same time poignant.

Luca Guadagnino’s Bones And All is the story of two outsiders who are desperately trying to “be people” in a world that doesn’t seem to have room for them.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 25, 2023

A road movie with a believable romance, disgusting horror, gorgeous visuals and impeccable score, Bones and All, a movie that shouldn't work, becomes one of the best of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 24, 2023

"Bones and All" uses the cannibal idea as a sign of inescapable difference, a metaphor for queerness in its most all-embracing form, and asks how we can lead fulfilling lives in a world that fears us

Full Review | Jun 6, 2023

doesn’t quite reach the twisted melodramatic heights to which Guadagnino clearly aspires, which makes Bones and All, like his Suspiria remake, more interesting as a concept than it is effective as a film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 27, 2023

Guadagnino has crafted something unexpectedly tender, a deeply romantic and empathetic study of young love between outsiders.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2023

The answer to how you blend a story like this is that it does not taste well, cannibal or not.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Feb 14, 2023

The sort of moody melodrama that can be absorbed straight up or metaphorically.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 11, 2023

Supported by

‘Bones and All’ Review: You Eat What You Are

Luca Guadagnino’s latest stars Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell as young cannibals on the run.

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In a scene from the movie “Bones and All,” Maren and Lee sit on the lowered tailgate of a blue pickup truck parked among trees.

By A.O. Scott

Anyone who travels the roads of America must sooner or later confront the question of what to eat. Do you prefer the convenience of interstate fast food or the authenticity of a local greasy spoon? For the footloose young lovers in “Bones and All,” Luca Guadagnino’s gory, ridiculous and curiously touching new film, the decision is more a matter of “who” than “what.” Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) are foodies gripped by a specific and exotic appetite. They will order pancakes in a pinch, but what they really crave is human flesh.

These fine young cannibals — they prefer the term “eaters” — are part of a subculture that haunts the margins of mid-80s Middle America, recognizing one another by smell and subtle behavioral cues. Maren has grown up under the protection of her non-eater father (André Holland), who takes off when she is 18, leaving behind an audiocassette that helps her and the audience understand her condition, which first emerged when, as a toddler, she snacked on a babysitter.

Maren learns that her mother was also an eater and sets out to find her. The journey winds from Virginia to Minnesota and beyond, by way of picturesque spots in Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky and other states. (The cinematographer, Arseni Khachaturan, favors a moody autumnal palette.) Along the way, Maren meets a few others of her kind and learns something about their ways. A middle-aged drifter named Sully (a sad and spooky Mark Rylance) teaches her how to sniff out other eaters and shows her the rope he has braided from the hair of his prey. Later, she meets Lee at a convenience store, looking on as he deals with and ingests an obnoxious customer.

Grisly as it is, “Bones and All” is less a horror movie than an outlaw romance in the tradition of “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Badlands.” You’re more afraid of what might happen to Maren and Lee than of what they might do to anyone else. There is a sweetness to Chalamet and Russell that makes it hard to see them as monsters, and Guadagnino takes an empathetic, if not altogether approving, view of their tastes.

What does it mean to be an eater? The movie teases various analogies, some more palatable than others. What defines Maren, Lee, Sully and a few others (notably a gleeful predator played by Michael Stuhlbarg) is an affliction, a lifestyle and an identity. It’s something they’re born with, and something the squares (or should I say the meals) can never really understand.

Maren, openhearted and intellectually curious, wants to find an emotionally and ethically sustainable approach to cannibalism. If the compulsion to eat other people can’t be suppressed, could it somehow be managed? Individual eaters seem to make their own rules. Sully tries to seek out victims who are on the verge of death, while Lee persuades himself that his prey somehow had it coming. Maren, seeing how damaged Lee and Sully are (and uncovering the horror of her mother’s fate), dares to imagine something like happiness. Her belief in her own goodness is disarming, and Russell’s performance is fresh and unaffected. She plays Maren as the heroine of a young-adult novel.

Which she is. Guadagnino adapted “Bones and All” from Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 book of the same name, aimed at teenage readers. The movie, bloody enough for an R rating, isn’t exactly a cannibal “Twilight,” but its romanticism — its passionate commitment to its vulnerable, misunderstood misfits — is defiantly and uncondescendingly adolescent.

Guadagnino is an elusive, sometimes beguiling (and sometimes exasperating) filmmaker, by turns vulgar, philosophical and sensual. His own tastes range from vintage trash to deep-dish aestheticism, and at his best — in “A Bigger Splash,” “Call Me By Your Name” and the HBO series “We Are Who We Are” — he can combine melodramatic pop extravagance with art-house refinement.

“Bones and All” is a ragged hybrid of genres and styles, an elevated exploitation movie, a succession of moods — anxious, horny, dreamy, sad — in search of a metaphor. Or maybe the metaphor is obvious. Neither raw nor fully cooked, it might make you lose your appetite, but it’s more likely that you’ll still be hungry when it’s over.

Bones and All Rated R. Flesh and blood. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Cast & crew
User reviews

Bones and All

A young woman embarks on a 1000 mile odyssey through America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will deter... Read all A young woman embarks on a 1000 mile odyssey through America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether love can survive their otherness. A young woman embarks on a 1000 mile odyssey through America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether love can survive their otherness.

Luca Guadagnino
David Kajganich
Camille DeAngelis
Timothée Chalamet
Taylor Russell
Mark Rylance
331 User reviews
263 Critic reviews
74 Metascore
4 wins & 79 nominations

Top cast 66

Maren's Father

Attendant (Corlis, MD)

Boy Playing Ball Toss

Clerk (MN Gas Station)

Barbara Kerns
Gail the Nurse

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia Director Luca Guadagnino stated in a video for Vanity Fair that the fringe in Maren's hairstyle came directly from the haircut of a character from Jonathan Demme 's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) . The character in question is Stacy Hubka (played by Lauren Roselli ).
Goofs While Lee is talking to the Carnival Worker, the fox stuffed animals in the background suddenly disappear.

Maren : [to Brad] You're not one of us?

Jake : Abso-fuckin-lutely normal he is! Well, uh, clearly not normal. Hasn't had his full bones yet. But I reckon that's coming soon enough.

Lee : Full bones?

Jake : When you eat the whole thing, bones and all. You ain't done that yet? That's a big fucking deal. It's like your first time. There's before bones and all, and then there's after.

Connections Featured in Amanda the Jedi Show: BONES AND ALL is the Most Disgusting Movie of the Year - Movie and Book Explained (2022)
Soundtracks Swan of Tuonela (Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22/2) Written by Jean Sibelius Performed by Taylor Russell

User reviews 331

Pretty cinematography, but ultimately forgettable.

Davidh122397
Nov 27, 2022
How long is Bones and All? Powered by Alexa
November 23, 2022 (United States)
United States
united artists releasing
Hasta los huesos
University of Cincinnati, Zimmer Hall - 315 College Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (location)
Frenesy Film Company
Per Capita Productions
The Apartment
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$16,000,000 (estimated)
$15,234,907
Runtime 2 hours 11 minutes
Dolby Digital