He and his screenwriter, David Kajganish, haven't put in an urgent plot or any amazing revelations, so we're left watching two supernatural cannibals meandering around sleepy Midwestern and Southeastern backwater towns for a couple of hours, and that raises the question of whether the hopes and fears of two non-supernatural non-cannibals might have been more compelling. Another eater, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, is almost as memorably crazed as Sully is.Įventually, though, Guadagnino's decision to be so earnest about the gruesome subject matter works against the film, rather than for it. There are a couple of fabulous cameos, too.

Various grisly shocks aside, the mood is relaxed and optimistic, and the magnetic Russell has no problem holding the viewer's attention in every scene: this should be as much of a star-making film for her as Call Me by Your Name was for Chalamet. Despite having some unsavoury habits of his own, Lee is a cool, charming, skinny young rebel played by Chalamet, so he and Maren take a blue pick-up truck from someone who, shall we say, no longer needs it, and this blood-drenched Bonnie and Clyde hit the road together. The next eater who sniffs her out is a far more promising prospect. He offers her some sage advice, but the sight of him in his white vest and underpants, chomping a recently deceased old woman, is almost enough to convince her that he might not be an ideal mentor, and his custom of braiding his victims' hair into a long rope is the clincher. A rumpled, pony-tailed drifter called Sully (Mark Rylance at his creepiest) tells her that she is an 'eater': not only will her hunger intensify as she gets older, but she will learn to smell other eaters from a distance. She soon learns that her strange compulsion isn't as unusual as she had thought. When he abandons her, Maren buys a Greyhound bus ticket, and heads across the country in search of her long-lost mother. Her father has known about her unstoppable cannibal urges for years, but he can't deal with them any longer. One of the school's popular girls invites her over for a sleepover, and all seems to be going well until Guadagnino delivers a moment guaranteed to make you gasp and/or groan: Maren sucks her new friend's finger, and then bites down on it until you can hear the crunch. Taylor Russell stars as Maren, a shy 18-year-old schoolgirl who has just moved to rural Virginia with her single father (André Holland). The ultimate film star for the 21st Century 11 of the best films to watch this September

Once again, it's adapted from a novel – Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis – and once again it is set in the 1980s, but their new collaboration is different in one key respect: it has a lot more shots of people ripping apart human flesh with their teeth.

Having made Call Me by Your Name together, Timothée Chalamet and Luca Guadagnino reunite for another tender tale of budding romance.

Bloody bones novel