Raw is a French drama horror movie. It is considered an art film that has a runtime of around 1 hour and 39 minutes because you’ll need to remember how long it lasts to count down how much is there left to the end of the movie. Justine (Garance Marillier) is a freshman at her parents’ alma mater Saint-Exupéry Veterinary School where her older sister, Alex (Ella Rump), is a senior.
It begins with Justine nearly puking because she finds a meatball in her mashed potatoes while she is eating at a diner with parents. This is an entirely large show of how strict they are with their food since they’re vegetarians and a major plot point. After all, the title of the movie is “Raw”. Meanwhile, they’re on a road trip to send her to her new school. Yay…
Not knowing where Justine’s sister is at the school, her parents leave her at the carpark to fend for herself. It’s alright though, she’s a smart girl and finds her new dorm room where she meets her roommate Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella).
It’s Rush Week, and they’re both awakened in the middle of the night by masked students and are forced to crawl on the ground with all the other freshmen to a secret party. At this point you might realise that this movie has an R21 Rating for a reason when Justine finally finds her sister booty dancing on a table. There’s nudity, sexual undertones, smoking in medical facilities (I doubt that’s hygienic) and of course, cannibalism.
You might try to find the artsy message underlining this movie where Justine is the privileged smart student with prestigious parents who finds herself needing to fit in with the rest of the students. To perhaps keep herself the ‘same’ with everyone else and if that’s the way to get successful in life instead of getting beaten down by her seniors during the school’s Rush Week.
You might try.
Only if you can get through the midpoint where Justine and Alex are doing some sisterly bonding by doing Brazilian waxes. Of all things they could have decided to do to bond, they had to do Brazilian waxes. This is the one scene that everyone might start to screech over when the wax starts to get stuck to Justine’s skin and Alex tries to rip it off unsuccessfully before she has the brilliant idea of grabbing her scissors out instead.
Excuse me but SCISSORS near a VAJAYJAY is something to scream about.
At the very last moment… Justine accidentally gets Alex’s finger cut off and her sister drops dead in a faint on the floor. After calling for an ambulance, Justine hunts down the severed finger to put it in ice and since there isn’t any in Alex’s room, she decides to eat the finger.
Yes. She eats her sister’s finger.
Boys and girls, please do not eat people’s body parts if you’ve accidentally cut them off. I’m sure it’s terribly unhygienic and not good for you.
Everything goes downhill from here.
If you can sit through the waxing scene, you might possibly stand what happens in the rest of the movie because it continues on making you wonder why you’re still watching it and if it has a ‘message’ at the end of the story.
If you to decide to give up watching it halfway through, don’t worry though because when this movie was first shown at a film festival, at least 30 people left the cinema, two people fainted, and some ran to the toilet to puke.
If you do decide to continue watching it, or even challenge your friends if they can finish this movie, there is a pay off at the end when you realise what had happened and that everything had been foreshadowed with little hints from the start. It’s actually brilliant storytelling. It’s just really gory.
Oh, and one more thing. Don’t watch this while eating a snack. You’ll regret it.
