Bounding Into Halloween, Night 22: ‘Bones And All’ And ‘Bride of Re-Animator’ Herald More “Hump Day Horror”
The month is almost over, and the ache has already started. It’s that feeling when a moment of parting draws closer, and the hours turn into seconds. Time is fleeting, just like love, and it ends faster for some, but that’s more of a common problem than most people think.
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Double entendres aside, tonight’s twosome of smitten suspense eavesdrops into the lives of a young couple looking to fill the void inside one mouthful of human flesh at a time, and a pair of mad scientists who are trying to build the perfect partner by using some extremely weird science.
Bones and All (2022)
The stop through our crimson-colored tunnel of love brings director Luca Guadagnino back to this year’s horrorthon with the follow-up to his immensely overrated 2018 “re-imagining” of Suspiria.
This adaptation of the 2015 novel by Camille DeAngelis stars Judy Robinson from the Netflix Lost in Space series (Taylor Russell) as a homeless flesh-eater who wanders looking for people with likeminded tastes. That’s when Paul Atreides from the most recent Dune movies (Timothée Chalamet) comes along to add a little spice to her diet.
It is the year 1988. George H.W. Bush us elected as the 41st president of the United States in a landslide victory, and Metallica’s fourth LP, …And Justice For All, is certified platinum nine weeks after its release, despite getting very little airplay from radio DJs.
But none of this matters to 18-year-old Maren Yearly (Russell) because she had to get smuggled out of town by her father after she tried to eat one of her friends during a sleepover. Having reached his limit with her insatiable hunger for homo sapiens, he gives her money, and a tape that explains more about Maren’s meat mania.
She links up with a creepy old guy (Mark Rylance) who has the same eating disorder, but ghosts him after meeting a younger non-vegan (Chalamet), and they hit the road for takeout.
This is a romance story with cannibals, and there isn’t a fleshy scrap of humor, but that’s the movie’s greatest strength. Both actors play their roles with complete earnesty, and everything about them is normal (save for the people-eating).
Giving the film its eerily beautiful sound is the Oscar-winning dark beacon of musical brilliance, Trent Reznor, and it flows perfectly as the inevitable tragedy unfolds for the Somewhat Damaged couple. It’s a silly concept that plays out better than it should.
This movie, Bones and All, can be consumed on Prime, and the trailer is below:
Bride of Re-Animator (1990)
Where the last film lacked in camp, this one makes up for it by the bloody bucket full. This follow-up to the classic gorefest, Re-Animator (1985), sees Brian Yuzna (Society, The Dentist) taking Stuard Gordon’s place as director, and the story itself is loosely based off of the last two chapters in the 1922 short, Herbert West – Reanimator, by HP Lovecraft.
Horror icon, Jeffery Combs (From Beyond, Doctor Mordrid, Castle Freak) and Bruce Abbott return as the dynamic duo of doctors who will stop at nothing to cure the disease known as death.
It has been eight months since the events of the previous movie, and the morgue massacre at Miskatonic University. Dr. West (Combs) and Dr. Cain (Abbott) have been working as medics in Peru during the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and they’ve got nothing to lose because it’s just them against the world.
Rap puns aside, they’re using the fresh corpses from that bloody conflict for their experiments with re-animating dead tissue. Things are going relatively smooth until enemy forces destroy their camp, and they travel back home to the US (instead of getting beheaded by the guerrilla squad).
If the last part didn’t send your disbelief crashing down into the dirt, they somehow managed to get jobs at Miskatonic University as doctors, despite having turned their morgue into a dead body disco less than a year ago.
The mad scientists continue their work, but then West decides that resurrecting dead people is way too 1980s, and that building new life from the re-animated parts of multiple people is what will bring them into the 90s.
This entertaining sequel doesn’t have the first movie’s dark wit, and Barbara Crampton’s presence was sorely missed, but it still has plenty of glorious B-movie gore. David Gale returns as the diabolical decapitatee, Dr. Hill, and almost sends the movie over the side of a cliff with over-the-top camp, but then he gets bat wings sewn into his neck.
Bride of Re-Animator is waiting on Fandango, and here comes the trailer:
NEXT: Bounding Into Halloween, Night 12: ‘Event Horizon’ & ‘Lifeforce’ Bring Terror From The Skies
