Raw (2017)
Directed by Julia Ducournau
Stringent vegetarian Justine encounters a decadent, merciless, and dangerously seductive world during her first week at veterinary school. Desperate to fit in, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time. She soon experiences terrible and unexpected consequences as her true self begins to emerge.
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29 films that influenced Raw
What critics say influenced Raw
In a kind of devilish performance duet, she’s ably matched by a punky live-wire turn from Rumpf, who channels an unholy blend of Béatrice Dalle in “Betty Blue” and Fairuza Balk’s signature 1990s role in “The Craft.”
Previous foreign movies, including Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day and Jorge Michel Grau's We Are What We Are, have attempted similar feats by combining B-grade genre tropes like cannibalism with more upscale filmmaking, though Raw both does that and adds a welcome layer of Hollywood-style polish straight out of Craven or Carpenter.
If not the devilish, post-apocalyptic romp, “Delicatessen” (1991), perhaps Claire Denis’ “Trouble Every Day” (2001) would make a great double bill with “Raw.”
As in Ginger Snaps , which Raw thematically recalls, the protagonist's supernatural awakening is linked predominantly to sex.
While it may be easy to draw parallels between Ducournau’s Raw and films like Ginger Snaps or anything from David Cronenberg’s early career, her harshly poignant examination of youth culture is told with such a defiant voice that there’s no doubt that her scorching vision on display here is undeniably a distinct one that’s all her own.
This cannibal coming-of-age drama is a helluva horror story that joins the ranks of the modern pop feminist nightmares that have come before: What Ginger Snaps did with lycanthropy and The Craft did with its witchy teens, Raw does for the cannibal subgenre by aligning Justine’s burgeoning appetite with her sexual awakening.
"Suspiria" meets "Ginger Snaps" in a muscular yet elegant campus cannibal horror from bright new talent Julia Ducournau.
In a kind of devilish performance duet, she’s ably matched by a punky live-wire turn from Rumpf, who channels an unholy blend of Béatrice Dalle in “Betty Blue” and Fairuza Balk’s signature 1990s role in “The Craft.”
This cannibal coming-of-age drama is a helluva horror story that joins the ranks of the modern pop feminist nightmares that have come before: What Ginger Snaps did with lycanthropy and The Craft did with its witchy teens, Raw does for the cannibal subgenre by aligning Justine’s burgeoning appetite with her sexual awakening.
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Back in 2014, it was The Babadook ; in 2015 it was The Witch ; and last year, it was Under the Shadow .
Horror fans grow apoplectic when we snooty-pants critics take a movie like The Babadook or The Witch and call them “elevated”—but the truth is that when you compare something like Raw to the dross certain VOD channels pump out each week, there really is a necessary threshold for taking this genre seriously.
This strange, sadistic movie is for that rare adventurer who considers Salo (1975) essential cinema, whose idea of a wholesome, feel-good family film is Let the Right One In (2008).
It’s a performance strangely reminiscent of a young Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose,” and one that earmarks Marillier as talent to keep an eye on.
This location is key to what follows: Like the dance academy in Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” (or the school in 2014’s Critics’ Week triumph “The Tribe”), the college appears to be a placeless, hermetically sealed environment permeated with heightened emotion; a kind of twisted dream-logic dominates and permits events to get suitably out of hand.
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If not the devilish, post-apocalyptic romp, “Delicatessen” (1991), perhaps Claire Denis’ “Trouble Every Day” (2001) would make a great double bill with “Raw.”
Here we are, then, revisiting David Cronenberg’s Crash, one might be tempted to think.