When the hunger strikes, it devours more than flesh—it consumes identity, desire, and the fragile bonds of humanity itself.

 

In the shadowy corners of modern horror, cannibalism transcends its visceral shock value to become a potent metaphor for the turmoil of adolescence, sexual awakening, and societal alienation. Films like Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016) and Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All (2022) masterfully wield this taboo as a lens for exploring the raw edges of human experience, pitting the intimate horrors of family against the nomadic dread of rootless love.

 

  • Primal Awakenings: Both films frame cannibalism as a metaphor for puberty and sexual discovery, transforming bodily cravings into cinematic feasts of repression and release.
  • Contrasting Canvases: Raw’s claustrophobic veterinary school setting amplifies familial tensions, while Bones and All’s American road odyssey evokes freedom laced with inevitable doom.
  • Enduring Echoes: These works redefine cannibal horror by blending gore with emotional depth, influencing a new wave of metaphorical monstrosity in genre cinema.

 

The Flesh That Binds: Origins of Cannibal Metaphor

Cannibalism has long haunted horror cinema, from the survivalist savagery of The Hills Have Eyes to the ritualistic rites in Hannibal. Yet Raw and Bones and All elevate it beyond mere monstrosity, using the act of consumption as a visceral shorthand for the uncontrollable urges of youth. In Ducournau’s debut feature, the story unfolds at a veterinary university where incoming freshman Justine, raised as a strict vegetarian by her professor parents, undergoes a brutal hazing ritual. Forced to swallow a sliver of raw rabbit kidney, she awakens a latent carnivorous hunger that escalates into full-blown anthropophagy. Her sister Alexia, a fellow student with her own feral tendencies, becomes both temptress and mirror, drawing Justine into a spiral of finger-nibbling, incestuous encounters, and ultimately fratricidal frenzy. The film’s narrative crescendos in a blood-soaked climax where familial legacies of flesh-eating are laid bare, Justine emerging transformed yet haunted.

Contrast this with Bones and All, adapted from Camille DeAngelis’s novel by David Kajganich, where director Guadagnino transplants the tale to Reagan-era America. Maren Yearly, a young woman cursed with cannibalistic impulses since childhood—evidenced by her devouring a friend’s face at a sleepover—flees her trailer-park life after her father abandons her with a how-to-survive guide. On the road, she encounters Lee, a similarly afflicted drifter played with magnetic intensity by Timothée Chalamet. Their romance blooms amid feasts of the unworthy: bullies, abusers, the elderly lost in nursing homes. Yet beneath the tender kisses and shared sins lurks the “eater” underworld—eaters who sniff out their own kind—and the inescapable pull of self-destruction. Maren and Lee’s journey ends not in redemption but in a poignant acceptance of their monstrous love, bones and all.

These synopses reveal how both films eschew traditional slasher mechanics for psychological immersion. Ducournau’s camera lingers on Justine’s trembling lips and vomiting fits, capturing the grotesque poetry of transformation. Guadagnino, known for his sensual gazes in Call Me by Your Name, infuses the road trip with sun-dappled lyricism, where acts of consumption unfold in moonlit fields or dingy motels, blending horror with heartbreaking intimacy.

Puberty’s Bloody Feast: Sexual Awakening on Screen

At the heart of Raw lies a ferocious allegory for female puberty and sexual maturation. Justine’s initial kidney ingestion mirrors the first menstrual bleed, her body rebelling against imposed purity. As her cravings intensify, they intertwine with eroticism: a classroom scene where she grinds against a classmate’s arm, or the charged encounter with Alexia that devolves into mutual mutilation. Ducournau draws from her own veterinary studies, using animal dissections as metaphors for bodily invasion—Justine’s scalpel-wielding hands trembling not just from hunger but from the fear of her emerging desires. Critics have noted how this positions cannibalism as a queer-coded exploration of sisterly bonds pushed to taboo extremes, challenging heteronormative coming-of-age narratives.

Bones and All extends this metaphor into a broader queer romance, where Maren and Lee’s shared affliction becomes a bridge across isolation. Their first kill together, seducing and consuming a predatory nurse, doubles as an act of erotic defiance against patriarchal violence. Guadagnino’s direction emphasises sensory overload: the wet crunches of flesh, the coppery scent of blood mingling with sweat-soaked embraces. Here, cannibalism symbolises the devouring nature of young love—passionate, all-consuming, destined to leave one hollow. Maren’s hesitation post-feast, wiping gore from her lover’s chin, underscores the film’s thesis: monstrosity is not the eating, but the loneliness that precedes it.

Both films excel in character studies that humanise the inhuman. Justine’s arc from prude to predator is anchored in Garance Marillier’s wide-eyed vulnerability, her physicality convulsing with authenticity. Maren, embodied by Taylor Russell’s poised ferocity, navigates quiet despair, her stillness amplifying the chaos of her impulses. These performances transform cannibalism from spectacle to symptom, inviting viewers to confront their own suppressed hungers.

Family Meat vs. Roadkill Romance: Structural Showdowns

Raw’s confined campus setting amplifies themes of inherited trauma, the family unit as a cannibalistic clan. Parents who once forced vegetarianism reveal their own hypocrisies, their dinner table a battlefield of repressed urges. This claustrophobia heightens tension, every lecture hall or dorm room a pressure cooker for Justine’s breakdown. Ducournau’s mise-en-scène—fluorescent lights buzzing over glistening cadavers—evokes David Cronenberg’s body horror, yet infuses it with French New Extremity’s unflinching gaze.

Guadagnino counters with vast, decaying American landscapes: rusting factories, endless highways, trailer parks shrouded in twilight. This nomadism reflects Maren’s rootlessness, her bond with Lee a fragile raft on a sea of violence. Encounters with other eaters, like the pathetic Sully or the bonfire cult, inject folk-horror elements, expanding the metaphor to societal fringes. The road movie structure allows for episodic gore— a trailer massacre, a beachside betrayal—each stop peeling back layers of Maren’s psyche.

Stylistically, Raw pulses with handheld urgency, vomit and blood splattering the lens in long, unbroken takes that immerse us in disgust. Bones and All favours elegiac wide shots, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score weaving synth melancholy around squelching sound design. Together, they showcase cannibalism’s versatility: intimate incision versus expansive devouring.

Gore Gastronomy: Special Effects and Sensory Assault

Practical effects anchor both films’ authenticity. In Raw, makeup artist Pierre-Olivier Persin crafted prosthetics for flayed fingers and ravaged torsos, blending silicone with real animal offal for tactile realism. Ducournau insisted on minimal CGI, filming Marillier’s self-induced vomiting—drawn from her own experiences—for unfiltered verisimilitude. The result: a sensory barrage where audiences report nausea, proving horror’s power lies in the palpable.

Bones and All ramps up the scale with KNB EFX Group’s handiwork: decapitations yielding to exposed ribcages, devoured faces reduced to glistening skulls. Guadagnino balanced this with romantic interludes, using negative space—empty motels post-feast—to evoke aftermath’s emptiness. Sound design amplifies the metaphor: amplified mastication, laboured breaths post-orgasmic kills, turning appetite into auditory nightmare.

These effects sections highlight directorial intent: Raw internalises horror through close-ups, Bones and All externalises it across vistas, both proving metaphorical cannibalism thrives on corporeal conviction.

Monstrous Legacies: Influence and Cultural Ripples

Raw premiered at Toronto to walkouts and acclaim, launching Ducournau toward Titane’s Palme d’Or. It revitalised female-led body horror, echoing Ginger Snaps while forging new paths in arthouse extremity. Festival buzz translated to cult status, influencing indie horrors like She Dies Tomorrow.

Bones and All, despite mixed reception for its romantic leanings, resonated amid post-pandemic isolation tales. Its queer cannibals echo Let the Right One In’s vampire lovers, cementing Guadagnino’s genre pivot. Both films challenge cannibal tropes—from Cannibal Holocaust’s exploitation to The Silence of the Lambs’s sophistication—by centering emotional cores.

Production tales enrich their myths: Raw faced distributor squeamishness, its trailer edited for US release; Bones and All navigated COVID shoots, Chalamet method-eating raw meat for realism. Censorship battles underscore their provocative edge.

In genre placement, they bridge splatter and psychological horror, evolving subgenres toward empathetic monstrosity. Their metaphors—puberty as predation, love as consumption—resonate in therapy culture’s dissection of trauma.

Director in the Spotlight

Julia Ducournau, born in 1983 in Paris to a gynaecologist mother and dermatologist father, grew up immersed in medical worlds that would fuel her visceral cinema. Studying literature at university before pivoting to the prestigious La Fémis film school, she directed acclaimed shorts like Junior (2011), a Cannes-selected tale of flesh-swapping twins that previewed her body-horror obsessions. Her feature debut Raw (2016) stunned festivals worldwide, earning her the top prize at Festival du Nouveau Cinéma and cementing her as a French horror prodigy influenced by Cronenberg, Clive Barker, and feminist thinkers like Julia Kristeva.

Ducournau’s follow-up, Titane (2021), won the Palme d’Or at Cannes—the first for a female-directed horror—blending car fetishism, gender fluidity, and serial killing in Alexia’s titanium-skulled rampage. Her style marries extreme physicality with emotional precision, often starring non-actors for raw authenticity. Upcoming projects include Alpha, a collaboration with Guillermo del Toro. Filmography highlights: Raw (2016)—vegan freshman’s cannibal awakening; Titane (2021)—killer’s pregnancy delusion; shorts Junior (2011), Keep an Eye for Hitmen (2019). A vegetarian herself until Raw’s research, she champions horror’s power to probe abjection.

Actor in the Spotlight

Taylor Russell, born in 1994 in Vancouver to a black American father and white Canadian mother, navigated a nomadic childhood across Canada and the US before settling in Montreal. Discovered via Family Game stage work, she broke out in Words on Bathroom Walls (2020) as a supportive girlfriend to a schizophrenic teen, earning Independent Spirit nods. Her horror turn in Escape Room (2019) showcased scream-queen poise, but Bones and All (2022) elevated her to auteur muse, capturing Maren’s quiet ferocity amid gore.

Russell’s career trajectory blends genre and drama: Hot Air (2019) opposite Steve Coogan; Netflix’s Lost in Space (2018-2021) as Judy Robinson, earning Saturn Awards; The Silent Twins (2022) as June Gibbons in a tale of psychic sisters. Awards include CFCA nominations for breakthrough. Upcoming: Superior (2023) with Annabelle Wallis. Filmography: Escape Room (2019)—puzzle-trap survivor; Words on Bathroom Walls (2020)—romantic anchor; Bones and All (2022)—cannibal runaway; TV: Blurt! (2018), LOST IN SPACE (2018-2021). Her emotive minimalism makes monsters relatable.

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Bibliography

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Collis, C. (2022) Bones and All: Luca Guadagnino on his cannibal romance. Entertainment Weekly. Available at: https://ew.com/movies/bones-and-all-luca-guadagnino-interview/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Farber, S. (2016) ‘Raw’: Julia Ducournau on Making a Cannibal Coming-of-Age Story. IndieWire. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/raw-julia-ducournau-interview-cannibal-movie-1201742392/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Harris, E. (2021) The Body Horror of Julia Ducournau. Sight and Sound. BFI.

Kay, J. (2022) Bones and All review: Cannibal road movie bites off more than it can chew. Radio Times. Available at: https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/bones-and-all-review/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Schobert, R. (2017) Raw: An Interview with Julia Ducournau. Hammer to Nail. Available at: https://www.hammertonail.com/interviews/raw-julia-ducournau/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Thompson, D. (2022) ‘Bones and All’ Review: Love Bites. Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/bones-and-all-review-taylor-russell-timothee-chalamet-1235401234/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

White, T. (2016) Grave Admissions: The Veterinary Nightmares of ‘Raw’. Fangoria, 36, pp. 45-52.