Review of RAW (2016)
RAW (2016) is a kind of coming of age horror-drama film directed by Julia Ducournau and is a Belgian film spoken in the French language. RAW follows a new student and her sister, who are from a devout vegetarian family, in veterinary school and begins with a rather bizarre college hazing. It’s hard to summarize much else from this point without giving away too much so I will refrain from doing so, as I truly believe that this film is better when going in as ignorant as possible.
I want to start with the incredible visuals of this movie. Firstly, the opening scene honestly blew me away. Initially I was worried that this film was going to be filled with slow generic long shots of people going about their day; the kind that foreign European films are famous for, and in a way I wasn’t wrong. But the climax of the opening scene really set the pace for the rest of the movie and told an interesting narrative without any words or explanations. A narrative that made everything questionable and exciting, without actually giving anything away.
In addition to this, the cast were just really incredible actors. There were certain scenes that genuinely made me uncomfortable or made me seriously feel sick, and I actually have a very strong stomach. A combination of the acting and the camera shots when the protagonist was drunk, or the incredible visual effects of the blood and gore and the protagonist's approach to this. I constantly found myself cringing and feeling horribly uncomfortable, but in a way that I appreciate from such a difficult and (no pun intended) raw horror film. I am actually slightly disappointed that I would not be able to experience this level of discomfort if I were to watch RAW again.
This was just such bizarre and intriguing horror film that was done so well I can't really find any fault with it. There were a few instances where it just felt ridiculous, and even laughable at times, but not so much that I couldn't still appreciate it and not in such a way that I couldn't still follow the plot.
I knew that this film was going to be good, I had heard great things already, but I honestly didn't realise I would enjoy it as much as I did. I was just stunned by the whole thing and if anyone asks me for an example of a perfect foreign European film, I might just have to show them RAW.
