They don't exactly want to eat people they seem to need to eat people. The film takes place in 1988 and surveys the financial consequences of Reaganomics across the 'real' America, as the protagonists squat in squalor and wander through infrastructure as broken as they are. However, if any reading comes close, it's probably a socioeconomic one. This could be an allegory for many things, though it's a problematic one it becomes uncomfortable at best (and offensive at worst) as soon as interpretations begin to correlate the cannibalism here with something else (queerness, depression, addiction). They can't help how much they miss their families, still yearning for some kind of acceptance and validation in a world which is disgusted by them. Together, they struggle with the traumas of their past and attempt to process their cannibal cravings, debating over how much guilt is actually warranted. The filmmaker brings his typically expert eye to the United States for the first time, and captures the rundown beauty of small towns and the unkempt splendor of nature in his iconoclastically artful way (with help from cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan).

This likely won't be permanent, as Guadagnino's next film is a sports comedy ( Challengers, starring Zendaya), but it is an interesting detour that delivered this pair of gorgeous but sometimes awkward arthouse horror films. This continues the surprising turn toward horror that Guadagnino has taken, following his unexpected remake of Suspiria.

Related: Here's Every Luca Guadagnino Movie, Ranked It's a fascinating film that doesn't always work, having difficulty balancing its jarring tonal incongruities, but it's beautiful in its own way, an artistic twist on the now-overdone horror romance genre ( Twilight, Warm Bodies, Vampire Academy, Vamprie Diaries, True Blood, and so on). Bones and All follows two young drifters as they fall in love against the beautiful backdrop of Guadagnino's cinema, but this film is a far stretch from being a cannibalistic Call Me by Your Name ( Eat Me by Your Name?) and undoubtedly has its own identity.

Bones and all book review