For those who can’t stomach the idea of watching Raw, the synopsis alone is enough to make readers feel queasy. The horror film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, follows a young veterinary school student named Justine (Garance Marillier) who develops an appetite for human flesh after a hazing ritual goes off the rails. Clocking in at 99 minutes, the twisted movie deals with taboo subject matter and doesn’t shy away from showing rampant cannibalism on the screen. Despite sparking controversy and causing sickness and fainting in the audience, it currently sits at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes when aggregated from 201 reviews.
Some call Raw a coming-of-age film because it explores themes about shaping one’s identity and embracing desire. Be warned: This isn’t a happy-go-lucky journey into womanhood. It’s an effectively uncomfortable experience to watch, and many scenes are designed to gross out viewers. For that reason, the film was subject to global outrage, controversy, and plenty of people leaving the theater. It’s certainly not a film for everyone, but those who can stomach it will have interesting thoughts to chew on about what it means to shape one’s identity. Those themes, served with a heaping of disgusting gore on the side, have made Raw a cult favorite among body horror fans.
Hazing Goes Horribly Wrong at the Beginning of Raw
Justine is eating a finger in Raw 2016Image by Focus World
College is when many people figure out their place in the world. Justine, the protagonist of Raw, is eager to start her first semester of veterinary school. She’s not necessarily going to school on her own volition. Her older sister, Alexia (Ella Rumpf), and her parents are all alumni. Just because she’s a legacy student doesn’t mean her tenure is going to be smooth sailing. Justine and her roommate Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella) are forced to endure a week of extreme hazing rituals.
There have been many TV shows and films that have explored the dark underbelly of hazing in colleges. Raw takes it to a whole new level. As part of her initiation, Justine is splattered with blood and eats a raw rabbit kidney, even though she’s been a vegetarian all her life. At that moment, she’s willing to toss aside her personal values to assimilate into the group. She also develops an insatiable hunger for meat.
Justine’s new appetite is shameful to her, and she doesn’t want to tell anyone, especially her sister. To get her fix, Justine attempts to steal a hamburger from the school cafeteria. She also asks Adrien to take her to the gas station so she can discreetly eat meat without anyone seeing her.
Hamburgers and gas station snacks don’t satisfy Justine’s craving. Eventually, she goes even further by consuming a raw chicken from the refrigerator, and in one of the most graphic scenes of the movie, eats her sister’s finger after it’s accidentally cut off with scissors. Justine cheekily tells her sister that she tastes like curry.
What’s remarkable is that Alexia covers for Justine, telling their parents it was a dog that ate her finger. Alexia should really have been appalled by Justine’s behavior. The fact that she covers for her sister tips the audience off to the fact that there’s something more sinister at play here. Shortly after Justine eats the finger, the audience learns that Alexia, too, has an appetite for raw meat. There was clearly something very wrong with the hazing ritual at their school. Later on, it’s revealed that Justine’s mother and father may also feed off each other.
The ending of Raw is why the word “cringe” was invented. Alexia plays a video of Justine at the morgue, crawling on all fours like an animal and attempting to bite the arm of one of the cadavers. This is a mortifying bid for power on Alexia’s part, and the viewer can assume she never wanted her sister to come to the school in the first place. To make matters worse, Alexia stabs Adrien in the neck and eats most of his leg while he’s dying in bed. It’s a brutal conclusion that is hard to shake.
Controversy Was Rampant After Raw Premiered at Cannes
Justine looks angry as she’s bleeding from her nose in Raw 2016Image by Focus World
Anybody who frequents horror circles will hear about purposefully gnarly films that are so loathsome and horrid that audience members end up having adverse reactions. In some extreme situations, people have been admitted to the hospital. Raw can be put in the same category as The Exorcist, Terrifier 3, Hostel, and Saw III for being so horrific that some people became violently ill or fainted in their seats. It’s no wonder that the film was almost rated NC-17.
Viewers at Cannes must have had strong stomachs because the film won one of the top prizes at the festival. Things didn’t go as well at the Toronto International Film Festival. Paramedics were called to attend to a handful of moviegoers who fainted in the audience. After recovering, they shared that some of the carnage on screen was a little too realistic.
Writing for the Canadian Press, journalist David Friend had this to say about being in the audience at the Toronto Film Festival:
[Raw] had audiences squirming in their seats and a few queasy patrons rushing for the exits. [The film is] far more than a gory horror film. Director Julia Ducournau brings a sense of humanity to the story.
Julia Ducournau showed that sense of humanity right away during a Q&A following the premiere in Toronto. She said she was “shocked” to hear that people had such a visceral reaction to her film. It wasn’t only in Toronto that audience members had such an extreme reaction. At a screening at the Gothenburg Film Festival, there were also instances of vomiting and fainting, and a reported 30 people had to leave the theater and take a break in the middle of the film, which is funny considering that it’s under two hours.
It’s been almost ten years since Raw was on the festival circuit, and now that everyone’s had time to digest, the film has overcome its controversial reputation. With its bold themes, sense of sexuality, and unrelenting gore, it can easily be classified as part of the French extremity movement. Those who can handle other cult classics in the genre, like Martyrs and High Tension, should definitely add it to their watch lists.
There Is More Than Just Carnage to Be Found in Raw
Adrien and Justine are wearing bloody lab coats in Raw 2016Image by Focus World
It may be surprising that Raw, a movie that sounds grotesque on the surface, was a huge hit with critics. As mentioned, it currently sits with a respectable 93% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film also has a 6.9/10 on IMDb and an 81 on Metacritic. Horror is a notoriously tough genre for many critics, so it’s not like a bunch of people were suddenly able to handle bloody brutality on screen. Rather, it’s because the body horror film has something more to say beneath its cannibalistic story.
Female competition comes to mind first and foremost. Justine and Alexia are two strong female leads who are unapologetic about what they desire. By no means are they characters without their flaws, and they don’t always treat people kindly. However, they are interesting because of their complexities. The girls are living in the shadow of their mother and father, graduates from the same school, and harboring the same penchant for meat. There is an inherent competition that exists between the sisters since they have the same appetite – one that was presumably inherited from their family. Ultimately, they aren’t able to overcome those feelings and forge a path that is uniquely their own. Alexia ends up in jail for killing Adrien, and Justine is sent back home to live with her parents.
Raw is a lot smarter than just being bloody and nausea-inducing for shock value. Writer/director Julia Ducournau brings a feminine touch that makes it feel more intimate than any other body horror film, save the recently Oscar-nominated The Substance.
Over time, Raw has gained the fan base that it rightfully deserves. The dust has settled, and the controversy and outrage that followed the film’s premiere aren’t nearly as loud. Squeamish viewers should definitely proceed with caution, and it’s definitely ill-advised to eat while watching, especially a serving of chicken fingers. Even in the comfort of one’s home, it’s still not preferable to want to vomit or faint when watching a movie. Those with iron guts, however, should give this cult favorite a chance.
Release Date
March 15, 2017
Runtime
99 Minutes
Director
Julia Ducournau
Writers
Julia Ducournau