Bones And All -

Rylance’s performance is a masterclass in unease. He whispers his lines, punctuates his sentences with wet-lipped smacks, and smells the air like a bloodhound. Sully represents Maren’s possible future: a lonely, middle-aged predator preying on the kindness of strangers. “You don’t have to be alone,” he coos. But his definition of “together” is a cage.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score is a departure from their usual industrial dread. Here, they deploy arpeggiated synths and trembling drones that evoke the melancholic pulse of ’80s ambient music. It is the sound of a heartbeat slowing down. It is the sound of two people driving toward a sunrise they might not live to see. Bones and All will provoke disgust. It is designed to. But the disgust is the point. Guadagnino is not asking you to condone cannibalism; he is using it as a metaphor for the parts of ourselves we cannot change. For some, that might be a mental illness, a forbidden desire, or a traumatic compulsion. For others, it is simply the knowledge that love, in its purest form, requires a kind of devouring. Bones and All

This is not a horror film. Or rather, it is a horror film that has forgotten it’s supposed to be scary. What Guadagnino—the director of the sun-drenched Call Me by Your Name —has crafted instead is a visceral, gut-wrenching, and impossibly tender romance. It is a road movie paved with bones, a cannibal love story that asks a radical question: What if the thing that makes you a monster is also the only thing that allows you to truly love? Bones and All , adapted from Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 novel, follows Maren as she searches for the father who abandoned her. Along the way, she meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet), a drifter with hollowed-out cheeks and a feral glint. Lee is also an “eater”—a person born with an inexplicable, irrepressible craving for human flesh. Rylance’s performance is a masterclass in unease

Bones and All is available on [streaming platform/theaters]. “You don’t have to be alone,” he coos

Chalamet, reuniting with Guadagnino, sheds his romantic lead skin. Lee is charming, yes—a thief who steals new cassette tapes and smokes with a crooked grin—but he is also exhausted. His eyes carry the weight of a past he can’t outrun. When he tells Maren, “I don’t eat people who are alive,” it is not a boast. It is a prayer.