The new cannibalistic-romance movie Bones and All, starring Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell,  just released in theaters, exploring the meaning of love through the characters Lee and Maren.

The story starts off with Taylor Russell’s character Maren. She’s a shy, lonely girl who’s constantly moving to different states because of her cannibalistic tendencies. Her father is normal, and once she turns 18 he leaves her to fend for herself. From first observing her, she seems quite fragile, but it’s soon learned that she can be the opposite, too.

From the beginning, Maren is pitied, and throughout the entirety of the movie, it’s difficult to unravel whether or not she can survive on her own.

She’s alone in the beginning, and she barely escapes from Sully, an old, creepy cannibal. Her escape proves that she can survive on her own, but just barely; because when Sully comes back, in the end, Maren wouldn’t have survived his attack on her own.

Whenever Maren’s alone in the movie, she’s always looking for someone: in the beginning, it’s her mom, but when she leaves Lee, she ends up looking for him again. Therefore, she can physically handle aloneness, but mentally she can’t bear loneliness; needing someone to love her.

Lee isn’t as straightforward as Maren is. He knows the effects of his crimes but doesn’t have much sympathy for the victims. He accepts his ugliness without question; unlike Maren who feels tremendous guilt, which prompts her to run away from Lee.

Despite their personal differences, they love each other deeply, which is why Maren comes back after leaving. Their heart-wrenching love story mirrors those of classic romance movies, continuing the all-consuming love theme.

Yet, Maren and Lee are also cannibals; so, exploring love in the most animalistic of forms, Bones and All displays the similarities between the most conventional love stories and the strangest ones.

Exploring the severity of love, Bones and All takes this theme to the extreme. Although cannibalism is supposed to be a metaphor, it’s too integrated into the storyline to just be that.

The relevance of cannibalism is mentioned in every second of the film, shoving the justification of it in our faces; turning the theme into a justification of cruelty instead of the all-consuming love story it portrays itself to be.

Watching it, you attempt to understand where the filmmakers are coming from, looking for the beauty in the horror. But all you can find is a distaste for the character’s simple-minded perspective on murder.

That being said, what Bones and All did accomplish was a subtle, yet loud uncomfortableness. Though at times the horror of it all was a bit too much, they did achieve a strange empathy and slight love for the characters. Maren and Lee are grotesque murderers, yet they’re just complex enough to act as they do while still being capable of love, which makes us feel for them.

Speaking only of the cinematography; it was beautiful. From long shots of the west, to fast shots of them murdering someone, to Lee’s devastating, gory death, the cinematography in Bones and All was extraordinary and exemplified the intended theme of love.

Bones and All achieved a strange, and quirky-yet-conventional love story, but there was simply too much relevance to cannibalism. I would take out the emphasis on their murderous acts and add in more of Maren and Lee’s story as a couple.