Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Abandoned by her father, a young woman embarks on a thousand-mile odyssey through the backroads of America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.
Bones and All is a singular, genre-bending cannibal romance set against a beautifully rendered 1980s American Midwest. Luca Guadagnino and DP Arseni Khachaturyan craft stunning, painterly imagery of vast American landscapes that give the film a genuinely distinctive visual identity. Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell deliver raw, committed performances — Russell in particular is a revelation, anchoring the film's emotional weight with remarkable restraint. The film's Novelty is genuinely high: it perfects a rare, nearly unprecedented fusion of lyrical romance and body-horror with a singular voice. The plot, however, is somewhat episodic and meanders in its middle section, relying on the road-movie structure without always propelling the narrative forward urgently. The ending, while emotionally coherent and thematically committed, is divisive — its brutal finality feels both earned and slightly abrupt, leaving some emotional threads unresolved rather than transcendent.