[Editor’s Note: the following contains spoilers for Bones and All]
Trigger Warning: the following includes descriptions of violence
When it comes to labeling a movie bad, I feel like the movie must have different factors that all come together to form this overarching label; maybe the acting was bad, or maybe the script was bad. Sometimes the plot doesn’t make sense or the effects were cheesy. Bones and All surprised me, and there have only been two movies this year that have done that (Everything Everywhere All at Once being the second). The shock that I felt watching this movie in theaters was unparalleled— and not in a good way.
Expectations vs reality
Expectations-wise, I had been waiting for this movie to come out since I first saw the trailers at the movie theatre months ago. Sure, I’ll be honest Timothée Chalamet was a lead, and I’ve liked his movies in the past so I was interested in seeing him star in a movie that gave off the vibe it was going to be a coming-of-age indie movie. But I also thought it was cool how they were making the love interest for a popular white celebrity a relatively lowkey biracial actress.
If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know that it showed a scene where Maren is underneath a coffee table with another girl and she lifts the girl’s fingers to her mouth, and as the audience, you assume something sexual is going to happen. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I think I had the wrong assumptions about what the movie was about. Like I mentioned before, I thought Bones and All was just a violent love story, possibly between vampires or some monsters since the word cannibalism was mentioned. What I didn’t expect? For Maren to just absolutely rip a girl’s finger off with her teeth and eat it, fleeing in a frenzy from the crime scene. It was at that moment that I knew I f*cked up.
the romanticization of cannibalism
I saw this movie with a friend and I’m glad I did because unless you’ve watched the movie yourself, no matter how well I explain it, you will not understand until you see it with your own eyes. Not only was the concept of cannibals in midwest America strange, but even stranger was the romanticization of it— by it, I mean cannibalism.
The movie was filled with an entire underlying message that cannibalism is sexy and erotic, and the way they marketed that idea was by using two attractive actors to fuel that message. Edits of the movie across TikTok are filled with comments from teen girls saying things like “I’d let him eat me,” or “God, I wish I was Maren,” and it’s left me wondering: what was the intended reaction to this movie? What message was the director trying to share? And why was Timothée Chalamet a producer of it?
While I have no problem with directors taking on challenging topics and diving into uncomfortable content, I just don’t see a situation where representing cannibalism in a positive light or as something kinky is ever necessary. Recently within media and specifically the TV and movie world, murderers have been glorified not only by the creators of the show but also by viewers who have been brain washed by media to think that violence and gore are normal and even acceptable things. Furthermore, I’ve seen a recent trend of girls on the internet romanticizing violent and murderous men in film/shows and it’s just gotten worse over the years. If we take one thing from this movie, it should be that we need to come to a consensus as a society and stop producing content that spreads the message that violence is attractive or something we all should just accept as normal. This might be a reach, but the more we accept violence as the norm, the less we resist it or try to fight for change, which is important for a progressive society to do.
Concluding remarks
As Gen Z, we are the next generation who has the opportunity to be pioneers of change. To me, that begins with calling sh*t out when you see it. Bones and All was not only distasteful but it was a failed attempt at creating a relatable love story. If you want to see romance between two people who are outsiders in society, I promise you there are so many better options out there. It’s not to say that people shouldn’t watch the movie, but I do urge people to be careful about how they react to the movie because attitudes shift cultural norms and cultural norms shift societies entirely. So, yeah, if you’re bored and want to watch something disturbingly entertaining, then go see Bones and All, but just remember, not all cannibals look like Timothée Chalamet and the movie was a work of fiction after all.