Raw

Year: 2016

Genre: Horror

Directed: Julia Docournau

Stars: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella, Laurent Lucas, Joana Preiss, Bouli Lanners, Marion Vernoux, Thomas Mustin, Marouan Iddoub, Jean-Louis Sbille, Benjamin Boutboul

Production: Petit Film Justine, Alexia, Adrien

This movie definitely oversells itself. From the rumors of overwhelmed audience members passing out, to the promotional barf bags being doled out at the screening, Raw can’t help but prime you for a big bloody letdown. I scare easily, so truth be told, I was shaking in my boots before the promotions guy started butchering the stars’ names and joking that we’d all enjoy a steak dinner afterwards. That comment ended up being cheeky in more ways than one.

Delicious!

None of this is the movie’s fault (the overtly candid title notwithstanding). Raw does come with early promise, as exemplified by the fact that nearly the entire film takes place in a veterinary hospital with an alarmingly lax attitude towards hazing. No matter how humdrum a scene becomes, there’s always the possibility of something furry and four-legged being cut open to get you writhing in your seat. It’s gross; those unaccustomed will no doubt be shocked. But it never reaches apex sensationalism.

Part of the problem lies with the foundations of the story. Our protagonist, the young, innocent and vegetarian Justine (Marillier) gets plopped down in the middle of campus and is immediately swept up in a montage of fraternal initiations and college ragers. Her black sheep of an older sister (Rumpf) stays at arm’s length and her roommate Adrien (Oufella) isn’t much of a help either. Thus she allows herself one too many indulgences and gets lost in a downward spiral that would put the goody-goody on your dorm room floor your freshman year to shame. Because we’ve all seen the exact same kind of thing before, not just in real life but in other films ad nausium, there’s really no real tension as far as the story is concerned. We know where all this is going, the question is how far will it go.

It's about sexual exploration...you get it?!

It goes about as far as you would expect, but does it all in a way that at times feels too literate and at other times too literal. In one scene our heroine is compelled to make out with a fellow freshman to the approval of their gracious “elders”. “Come out when you’re both green,” says one senior who had just doused them in blue and yellow paint and stuffed them into a dorm room bathroom. The color, the poppy music, the very situation, just screams art house overkill. It forces the audience to swim in a soup of hook-up excess masquerading as sex positive messaging, and gets us all to feel self-satisfied when we pick up on the films very clear themes.

Other times the camera lingers on gaping wounds and savagely ripped tendons for the sake of primal shocks. By the time we actually get to those scenes however, half the audience is conked-out while the other half is frustrated by the lack of I Drink Your Blood (1970)-level lunacy. Raw only really finds its balance in one incredibly effective scene: a scene in which the characterizations, thickly laid thematic groundings and primal sensationalism all coalesce to bring new meaning to the phrase nail-biting.

Raw is ultimately an interesting failed experiment in genre-crossing. It tries to take the gore-induced shocks of a very particular sub-genre of horror and attempts to elevate it via art house trappings and pseudo-feminist sensibilities. I admire the attempt, and I understand its zeal in the midst of successes like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) and The Witch (2015). Yet as far as having its Chianti and drinking it too, I really think the farthest this sub-genre can stretch is Cannibal! The Musical (1993).

Final Grade: D+