Maren (Taylor Russell) is a detached teen girl whose father seems to move them from town to town a great deal, preventing her from making long-term relationships. We discover why when she is invited to a sleepover and bites off the finger of a girl trying to befriend her. It turns out that she possesses an uncontrollable cannibalistic urge which has kept her and her father from having any sense of normalcy. Unfortunately, this most recent incident is the last straw for her father who abandons Maren to her own devices, forcing her to travel the countryside on her own. On her journey, she meets people like her both good and bad, including a young drifter named Lee (Timothée Chalamet) who she immediately feels drawn to. They set out on an odyssey together to find themselves and their place in the world, but can they ever escape who they are?

Director Luca Guadagnino has a knack for creating visual poetry. Even in films that I don’t totally love, there are scenes that feel near perfect. Bones and All is a bit meandering by its very nature as a kind of episodic road movie, but peppered along the way are brilliant sequences of poetic beauty and visceral horror that makes the ride completely worthwhile. In some ways, Bones and All might have worked a little better as a mini-series rather than feature film. But by having us follow Maren’s journey from beginning to end we draw closer to her which makes the film feel more intimate despite its sprawling nature. I particularly liked Mark Rylance’s intense and bizarre performance as what at first seems to be a kind of mentor for Maren but eventually proves to be something else entirely. I tend to really like these kinds of films that introduce us to a kind of hidden world in plain view like The Lost Room or Neverwhere. So the idea that the world is populated by what I presume are these genetic anomalies who are drawn to human flesh and can smell others like them is an intriguing one. This is another reason I felt like this could’ve made an interesting series, exploring the origin of these people and maybe showing different sub-sects of them from around the world. Anyway, no use speculating on what it isn’t, particularly when what it is is a fascinating and strangely tragic story of star-crossed lovers on a journey of self-discovery.

Shout Factory’s UHD Dolby Vision transfer for Bones and All is stunning with an impressive level of clarity and depth and nary an imperfection to be seen. Very nicely done indeed. The Dolby Atmos track is also nicely immersive with separation across the channels that makes the film’s world feel even more lived in and is capable of handling more intense sequences when they arrive as well. For extras, we just have a series of very short press kit featurettes and nothing else. Honestly very disappointing on the extras front. I would’ve liked an audio commentary or more of an extended interview with Guadagnino and what drew him to this material and how the cast came together in more detail.

Bones and All is a curious film that fuses romantic melancholy with visceral violence and dark fantasy to weave a uniquely engaging film that sits comfortably in Guadagnino’s film canon amidst other such singular films as Suspiria and Challengers. Highly recommended for fans of arthouse horror!