Raw

Dir: Julia Ducournau

2017

****

Imagine if an American film did cannibal horror set in a University, it certainly wouldn’t look anything like Raw. Nothing looks like Raw to be honest, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. There aren’t enough cannibal themed horrors in my opinion and if you are going to delve into the genre then it has to be done right and that means it should challenge, antagonize and make the viewer feel physically sick. Raw does all three. However, give me Cannibal Holocaust, Delicatessen or Parents any day of the week. I loved the realism and the quiet doom of Raw but felt that it had been done better in Claire Denis’s part cannibal/part vampire horror Trouble Every Day back in 2001. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Julia Ducournau’s Raw, I just disliked the story’s setting. The development of the young character makes her university the perfect backdrop, I just found this particular university to be wrong for the tone of the film. What kind of university would allow second and third year students abuse and torment new starters? It might happen, but never to the scale seen here. It took away an important aspect of the realism for me that I found detrimental to the rest of the film. Change around twenty minutes of the film and I would be heralding it as a horror masterpiece but as it is I think it makes mistakes. However, what it gets right, it get gets exceptionally right. It has several key scenes that will one day belong in the horror hall of fame – more scenes in fact than many classics I can think of. The film is so provocative it almost feels like bullying, and to provoke and antagonize the audience in such a way is a feat of dark genius. The horror of the story isn’t just saved for the ‘horror’ parts of the film neither, Ducournau finds little bits of darkness in everyday life, everyday people and in each and every one of us. I would generally run a mile away from a film that would hand out specially made vomit bags in cinema showings as part of a marketing strategy but I know that wasn’t the work of Ducournau, who was actually shocked to learn of people being taken ill during showings. My wife couldn’t watch more than twenty minutes, I stayed until the end but was fairly green by the end of it. I have to say though, it wasn’t so much the gore, blood and body-eating that made me feel uncomfortable, it was the way people treated each other and the provocative nature of the lead character played by Garance Marillier. Marillier is brilliant and utterly memorizing throughout the film. She flourishes as the story progresses and her characters transformation is the work of a hugely talented actor. I just didn’t feel comfortable watching a sixteen year old girl urinate (standing up no less). The provocative nature of the film is key to the story and it works successfully, but I still don’t like listening to the sound of someone scratching a blackboard, which is what watching Raw felt like at times. I’m glad the film didn’t go full horror though, not in the classical mainstream sense anyway. I thought the climax was genuinely one of the best I’d seen for many a year and made up for any misgivings I had with the rest of the film. It felt a little like a cannibal version of Ginger Snaps, directed by Gregg Araki, with a little bit of old school Cronenberg thrown in for good measure.