What’s it rated? R
When? 2022
Where’s it showing? Redbox
Luca Guadagino (Call Me by Your Name, A Bigger Splash) directs David Kajganich’s screenplay based on Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 novel about Maren (Taylor Russell), a young woman who’s beginning to confront her penchant for cannibalism. Part road trip, part horror, part romance, the story follows Maren as she meets another “eater,” Sully (Mark Rylance), who hopes to make her his companion, and later a young man, Lee (Timothée Chalamet), who also shares her appetite.
I unfortunately missed this one in the theater. Arseni Khachaturan’s cinematography is amazing, and the story itself is such an inventive mash-up. Maren’s journey begins after she turns 18 and her father abandons her, leaving her birth certificate, some cash, and a cassette tape upon which he’s recorded everything he knows about her history of cannibalism, which apparently began when she was only 3 years old, and info about her missing mother.
At its heart, this is a love story between two misfits trying to find a place in a world that doesn’t understand them. The film is both grisly and gorgeous, with a soulful, elegiac vibe. It feels weird to root for cannibals to succeed, but you can’t help but sympathize with their plight. (131 min.) Δ
This article appears in Feb 16-26, 2023.