We rarely see a cannibalism based horror film, let alone a decent one. Raw by Julia Ducournau is about a lifelong vegetarian youth spiraling into the world of meat, craving for flesh after entering a veterinary college.
The writing for Justine's (Garance Marillier) character development was good. The journey kicked off with us learning she's from a vegetarian family, but actually didn't mind eating meat. This was the potential hinted at the very beginning of the story. After being thrown into a new environment to go through an extreme ragging ritual which we'll talk about in a minute, she's coerced to experience meat for the first time, and since then, developed a catch for it! Although the escalation of transition from regular meat, to raw one then to human flesh was kinda abrupt, do watch out for the terrific moment of truth at midpoint as Justine discovered she's a cannibal by eating off her sister's amputated finger, before being spotted by the owner! Coming to realization that her sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) was also a cannibal elevated the conflict and excitement even further!
The rest of the picture dealt with how Justine tried to refrain from this dangerous position and distinguished herself from Alexia, who ended up jailed for murdering Justine's boyfriend for flesh. Through this shocking finale, we saw how Justine's fate would have turned out if she had dug the hole deeper under her feet. The thematic transformation of the protagonist was exactly like the main plot, moving from being innocent / harmless to too well-informed / harmful. Alexia teaching Justine to hunt for human meat by deliberating causing accidents on the road, Justine forcefully biting her own hand during sexual intercourse climax, Alexia feeding Justine a corpse's arm and the duos' battle on school rooftop were great sequences!
It's fascinating and smart that the script has treated cannibalism as both dietary condition and preference, much like how we have perceived vampires. When the last revelation hits you, you're prompted to think the film all over again. Justine's mother was also a cannibal apparently. And that explains the family's whole conversion to vegan diet in order to suppress everything down!
Despite being mostly well-directed, mind you this is not a movie for everyone. A great director would for sure know the limits and boundaries of graphical content that could be shown on celluloid. He or she would also recognize what can be displayed directly, what should only be implied and what's better to be left out of knowledge. Definitely, level of tolerance varies from person to person. But scenes such as digging dung out of a cow's hole, waxing pubic hair, operating animal carcasses and licking eyeballs were things only few could stomach watching. None of these had concrete purpose behind why it was included into the final cut. These unnecessarily graphic materials only made us squirm and added no value to the eventual product.
As aforementioned, we'll discuss the extreme hazing process now. It's unclear if it was the filmmaker's intention to push the movie hyperbolically to its extremity. If it was so, since the cannibalism topic is already batshit crazy, then it's understandable why the rookie abuse episodes were far out of left field. Otherwise, the initiation activity's intensity really didn't make sense and was far too uncomfortable to watch. It was as if the seniors were out to kill the juniors! Spilling animal blood on them, throwing their mattresses to the ground floor and pressuring them to eat raw rabbit kidneys, wear diapers to classrooms and make out under poured paints were stupidity at its peak. It was as if the college had no professors, rules or regulations to monitor these bunch of people. It seemed more like an asylum to be honest. The irony in all of these was, one of the characters felt uncomfortable speaking about raped monkeys during meal time. What's the difference, really?
Certain realism has to be appreciated here. For examples, the horse examination clip, itchy rash makeup effect all over the body and CGI for the chomped feet were well done! Ruben Impens' cinematography was lively, especially when canning the starting wide shot covering an array of trees lined up along roadside. Jim Williams' score was unsettling and at many instances, troubling! Before ending the write-up, it must be mentioned that the father sharing his smoke with the young daughter will make you question a lot of things.