Rare, please.

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Raw might be my favorite film of the year. It’s definitely better than anything that came out in 2016, even the Oscar-nominated films, with the exception of Arrival, which I think is terribly underrated.

I read a review about this film on Roger Ebert, where the reviewer praised the plot for being about female empowerment. I was nervous – was this going to be some politicized bullshit about a woman eating men who are vile and abuse her, effectively hitting me over the head with its point, a la Get Out?

Thankfully, this is not the case, and I am honestly quite confused as to how that particular reviewer could, in a sober state of mind, reach that conclusion about the films plot. It’s hard to tell if it’s a joke or not – her statement seems sincere. She claims that it’s about “a woman finding what she wants and going after it, albeit with bloody results.” Is that an endorsement or admonishment? Some people shouldn’t be able to go after what they want, obviously. I had a far different take on the film.

Here’s the basics on the plot: Our protagonist is Justine, a vegetarian and aspiring veterinarian who will soon be heading to college. She’s a bit naïve and innocent, though certainly capable and independent. Upon her arrival at school, she seems more overwhelmed by the partying and irresponsibility of her peers than by being on her own and away from home. She is surprised to find that the students at the school indulge in intense hazing rituals, including throwing the new students beds out dormitory windows, forcing “rookies” to crawl around on their hands and knees, and, in a wonderfully understated moment, forcing students to eat raw animal flesh. Justine protests this, saying she’s vegetarian, but her sister, an upperclassman, forces her to eat her share.

From this point, Justine’s life begins to careen off the rails. Although being initially repulsed by eating meat, she seems to quickly abandon her former vegetarianism, at first seeming just to enjoy eating a hamburger for the first time, but becoming increasingly feral. This is mirrored by her progress as a veterinary student: at first, she is a bit timid, apparently disturbed by having to cut into an animal to perform surgery, the usual squeamishness you might encounter in a rookie doctor, I presume. But as she continues to degenerate, she actually becomes a more effective vet, slicing into and dissecting animals with aplomb.

Justine, like any addict, must indulge her lust to increasingly disturbing degrees. She goes from apprehensively trying a hamburger, to comfortably eating a bratwurst or hot-dog or whatever, to ferociously chomping raw chicken, and finally succumbing to nibbling on her sisters severed finger in what is easily the most disturbing scene in the movie, or frankly, of any film in recent memory. It is at this moment that Justine fully surrenders herself to her disease, her addiction – and from that point, increasingly debases and loses herself in her sick, violent pursuit.

This is exactly why I can’t fathom how someone could non-ironically praise this film for a “woman going after what she wants”. It’s like saying a heroin addict stealing from their family and selling it for drug money is empowering them. It’s ridiculous: empowerment comes from a free choice, which addiction clearly cannot be categorized as. Justine is not pursuing her truest self, she’s succumbing to her most carnal, animalistic desires, turning against her beliefs in service to a substance (which in this case is human flesh). That’s not liberation, it’s enslavement.

That’s as far into the plot as I’m going to go. I’m now going to talk about what makes this movie so effective.

I was shocked to discover that this is Julia Ducournau’s directorial debut. This film is as masterfully composed, structured and manipulative as a David Lynch or Stanley Kubrick film, neither of whom are “horror” directors; neither, I suspect, is Ducournau. This is not a horror film because of jump-scares or creepy looking monsters or dark lighting. No, it has more in common with Requiem for a Dream than The Conjuring or The Babadook (another favorite of mine), for example. It’s disturbing and horrific not only for its subject matter but in how it displays it.

Violence is an interesting thing in film. You can have a series like Lord of the Rings, where a bunch of monsters get their heads cut off with blood spurting everywhere and all kinds of shit, but it’s PG-13. It’s because of how the violence is handled and the emotions behind it. In LOTR, Violence is treated less like an abomination and more of something our heroes are forced into to defend themselves. And, outside of Gimli and Legolas, who make a game out of how many orcs they can kill, no one seems to enjoy it,or deliberately seek it out. Compare this to David Fincher’s Gone Girl. Only one person dies, Neil Patrick Harris' character, and the scene where Amy slits his throat is so horrific not just because of the visuals of it because of the callousness with which she does it, with the clear disregard she has for human life and for her obvious sociopathy, as well as for how it blends sexuality and violence. It’s is so much more disturbing than any of the violence portrayed in the aforementioned fantasy series because of the way it portrays the victim of the violence, his terror, confusion, and pain: we place ourselves in the role of the victim, whereas in Lord of the Rings, we are in the role of the defenders.

Ella Rumpf, left, plays Justine's (Garance Marillier, right)

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This is similar to how violence is handled in Raw, but even more effectively than in Gone Girl, as it straddles the line of whether the audience is in the place of the perpetrator of the violence or the victim. In a more traditional horror film, the audience would clearly be in the role of the victim, as in a slasher film like A Nightmare on Elm Street. But Raw masterfully creates a sense of unease by showing the audience how they could easily become an addict, like Justine, while also showing us that we could just as easily become one of her victims. This prevents you from having a sense of moral righteousness about the events of the film which can actually dissolve the tension. Because, in a traditional film, the violence is portrayed as evil and inhuman, you expect that the noble protagonist will overcome it. By placing Justine, and her degeneration, at the center of Raw, all expectations are subverted, and the tension is allowed to flourish.

It’s also effective because of the way it debases its characters. Why is a film like The Shining so effective? It’s not because any of the imagery is particularly frightening on its own. It’s because of the concept of perversion. I won’t go too deep into The Shining, although I certainly could, as it’s one of my favorite films of all time, but suffice it to say that what’s so haunting about it is Jack’s inner perversion and the distortion of his role as the family’s protector and provider into a violent murderer. It triggers our sense of right and wrong more deeply than a character like Jason Voorhees does, with an added element of a betrayal of natural law that we experience as disgust.

Justine’s collapse into something barely human, at the mercy of her addiction, is haunting because of the sense of violation it creates: she has been corrupted from the inside out, rather than by an outside force, which is more disturbing. This is furthered by having the source of her addiction be cannibalism; just like in The Shining, where Jack’s transformation into a killer is made more disturbing by the fact that he is attempting to murder the people he should be protecting, so too is Justine’s transformation made more disturbing by the fact that cannibalism is so deeply rooted in the taboo and against our natural sense of morality. This movie would not be so haunting if she became addicted to meth, for example. That would allow us to feel more compassion for her because we don’t intrinsically view drug use as “perverted” – many people like to drink beer, smoke weed, whatever. We may know that meth is bad for us, and thus do not indulge in it, but it is not against our natural state to make use of a psychoactive drug, and so it is not as debauched and perverted as the subject of cannibalism.

Another element that makes this film so effective is its indulgence in surrealism. The surrealism is more built into the plot itself than into any specific imagery, which I like. The film is shot as though everything is real, but the events that happen are so unrealistic that they contrast with this sense of visual truthfulness. For example, adults, professors or administrators are virtually nonexistent in Raw. They make occasional appearances, but you get the sense that the school isn’t being run by anyone and that the professors take zero interest in the well-being of their students. Furthermore, students are shown to spend all night drinking and partying, etc., and yet we know that they could not possibly manage to be so outlandish and irresponsible and succeed as students at the same time. Any school where students are forced to eat raw meat as a hazing ritual would be shut down in about five seconds.

Now, surrealism is not always to a films benefit. Oftentimes films do not effectively balance surrealism with plausibility, and the characters are so bizarre that we can’t relate to them, and tension is lost because we aren’t invested in the fate of the characters. I love David Lynch’s films, but I can’t honestly tell you I give a shit about any of his characters or see myself in them at all. Imagine how much more effective and disturbing his films would be if you could relate to the characters, and you get Raw. The surrealism in this film is effective because it is assumptive. It’s basically saying, “okay, let’s just assume this is the situation and see where our characters go from there”, which, in my opinion, is a much more effective use of surrealism. Our character’s reactions and emotions are understandable and relatable, but the events are not, and once again this creates a sense of disease, like you’re walking on a thinly frozen lake, cracking under your feet.

It keeps you at a distance from the “world” of the film, meaning that you can’t quite know how you would react to it, but keeps you close to its characters, meaning that you can easily understand their actions, assuming that what’s happening to them is real. Ducournau masterfully suspends the audiences disbelief in Raw by giving them understandable characters in an inconsistent, confusing world.

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There are a few things I didn’t like about this film, however. The first and biggest complaint I have is the soundtrack. The music is far too conventional to effectively enhance what’s being shown on screen, and often seems to be a wrong fit for the genre as a whole, much less than a good fit for this specific movie. The soundtrack often comes off as almost baroque in style, in part due to the use of what is, as near as I can tell, a harpsichord. It’s good music on it’s own, but it ultimately creates a feeling of “tragedy” rather than “perversion”. This would be better if we could see ourselves in the role of the main character, but, as I said, the audience is intentionally positioned to never been quite sure where to see themselves.

As such, the music comes off like it’s trying to say something different from the film, which is that we should feel bad for Justine, but, because of her aberrant behavior, we’re not quite sure that we should feel that sorry for her. Her debasement is emotionally polarizing, and the music needs to enhance this, but I feel it misses the mark. It needs to be slightly more ambient and less traditional. I don’t have any problem with the use of orchestral instruments, but again, compare this film's soundtrack to that of The Shining, which is perhaps the best use of music in a film, ever. The music explodes, scratches, mewls, whines, and creaks, and more importantly, it does this in harmony with the events on-screen.

NOW, this is not to say that The Shining, or Raw for that matter, has to use the music “traditionally”. Take one scene from The Shining, the hallway scene where Danny rides around the corner and sees the sisters. The camera cuts unexpectedly from them standing and talking to him, to their chopped up corpses on the floor. In a less effective film, the music would perfectly sync with the shot transitions, but it doesn’t. It manipulates the audience by using the usual and expected cues of the sharp explosions of the music to signify something frightening happening to confuse and disorient us, and then lull us in by causing us to expect a scare at the wrong second, and then flashing the actual frightening image without the musical cue, thus creating shock, disease, and confusion, all at once. Raw would have benefited from a soundtrack more like this.

In this scene, the music is always slightly off from what the audience is seeing. The music pops just before Danny turns the corner, as opposed to in sync with it, which, as I said, manipulates our expectations of what we’re going to see. The film is also aware that the audience knows it’s trying to manipulate them through the music, so it goes to an even higher level of subverting your expectations. It’s truly brilliant.

The best use of music in Raw is a disturbingly erotic French horrorcore rap song. It’s use perfectly denotes our protagonist’s debasement – we get the distinct sense that she would never have listened to this music before she acquired a taste for human flesh – the “thirst”, as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia puts it. The music itself echoes the themes of the film. It’s a perfect choice, and I wish the whole soundtrack had been more similar to this.

Other than the soundtrack, my complaints are minor. A few performances by minor characters were not that great, but all the lead and supporting actors were excellent, especially Ella Rumpf as Alexia, Justine’s older sister. She is engaging, mesmerizing, complex, with a bit of a nasty streak. She’s easily the most fully realized character in the film, although Garance Marillier’s Justine is a dynamic character as well, perfectly presenting her character’s sense of conflict and aversion to her abnormal desires while also displaying Justine’s eventual pleasure in her submission to her addiction with a disturbing and haunting eroticism. I expect big things from both of these actresses.

All in all, Raw is a surreal masterpiece and an undeniably effective work of art. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn close. Julia Ducournau should be proud, and I can’t wait to see what she makes next.