Bones and All

The star-crossed young lovers in Bones and All have it hard enough without the need to satisfy their hereditary appetite for human flesh.

Mixing arthouse horror with a bittersweet coming-of-age romance, the latest from versatile director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) is both stylish and richly textured, even as it funnels its inventiveness into a conventional final act.

After a scene-setting prologue, it’s clear why Maren (Taylor Russell) is an angst-ridden teenage outcast in the 1980s. After a bloody incident at a slumber party, she’s forced to flee with her exasperated single father (Andre Holland), who eventually gives up raising her due to her, um, cannibalistic tendencies.

That leaves Maren to learn some of the background details as we do. She meets a fellow “feeder” (Mark Rylance) who teaches her about her acute sense of smell but has ulterior motives behind seeking her out.

Maren’s goal becomes traveling from Virginia to Minnesota to track down the mother she’s never met. Along the way, she falls for a drifter (Timothee Chalamet) who shares her affliction and provides comfort while sharing his own troubled history.

Traversing back roads across the Midwest, they visit roadside carnivals and remote swimming holes in a quest for prey. But once Maren realizes she’s searching for more than her family history, her insecurities gradually give way to an empowered determination to control her own destiny.

Within its somewhat familiar road-trip structure in which two lost souls connect, Bones and All explores Maren’s search for identity and acceptance at its core.

An ominous and introspective undercurrent runs throughout the film, which weaves surreal fantasy with gritty reality in a way that makes the violent outbursts that much more graphic and disturbing.

The meticulous visual composition complements the rich thematic texture in the character-driven screenplay by frequent Guadagnino collaborator David Kajganich (Suspiria), who adapted a Camille DeAngelis novel.

It becomes episodic as the narrative momentum fluctuates through encounters with a parade of creeps and oddballs, yet effectively juggles tones without settling for cheap emotional payoffs.

Through a muddled home stretch, the film generates sympathy thanks to its committed performances, particularly Russell (Waves), who chews more than the scenery with compassion and conviction.

Rated R, 130 minutes.