There is flesh on these bones

• Published date: 26 November 2022
• Publication title: Mix, The

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Taylor Russell, Timothee Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Andre Holland, Chloe Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, Mark Rylance

Rating: (R16) ★★★★

This adaptation of a 2015 young adult novel by Camille DeAngelis, which had book reviewers clambering to use the phrase ‘‘Twilight with cannibals’’, is something of an unusual beast; a teen-oriented studio movie that seems more suited to film festivals and art houses than Friday night at the multiplex.

For that reason, Bones and All (Rialto, Reading) is unlikely to become the pop cultural juggernaut of that earlier series, which is a shame because it’s bloody brilliant ... and I do mean bloody. Italian director and self-described ‘‘desperate Romanticist’’ Luca Guadagnino previously dabbled in horror with his excellent Suspiria remake in 2018, and this is even better if you have the, er, stomach for it.

Set in the late 1980s, it centres on 18-year-old Maren (Taylor Russell, outstanding), who we...