Raw (2016)

Raw is about our relationship to our bodies, so it can only be comedy or horror. Despite superficial differences, these are the only adequate genres for expressing the profound unease we harbor towards our corporeal shells  – our fear of its needs, processes, and vulnerability. Raw, from French director Julia Ducournau, taps into this ever-present dread as effectively as ‘80s body horror icons David Cronenberg and John Carpenter did with The Fly and The Thing, but from a welcome female perspective.

Justine (Garance Marillier) is a precocious student beginning her first year at the same veterinary college her sister attends. Although Raw is eventually exceptionally graphic and disturbing, a threatening atmosphere is conjured even in early scenes in which Justine’s over-protective parents drop her off at campus. Doe-eyed and unassuming, Justine is quickly caught up in a delirious hazing culture in which freshmen are essentially forced to booze, hook up, and even eat raw meat (the biggest taboo of all for vegetarian Justine).

Raw is anchored by Garance Marillier, fantastic in a lead performance which requires both naivety and savage cunning. She makes the transformation convincingly, and gives an emotional core to a project which is often intentionally off-putting (I suspect Raw incorporates every known bodily discharge at point or another). Ducournau captures Justine’s descent into ghoulishness with the glee of a friend who delights in a spectacularly mean prank (a particularly memorable scene involving a severed finger is Ducournau at her mischievous best).

Aside from its carnal preoccupations, Raw touches on many pressing topics, including an intentionally exaggerated depiction of hazing (Ducournau knows how to film a good party scene, tracking Justine in unbroken shots as she stumbles through the madness like a stunned soldier storming Normandy in Saving Private Ryan). Raw also possesses insight into the nature of addiction, vividly articulating the paradoxical dread of compulsive behavior – specifically, the horror of a rational mind watching on helplessly as a senseless body satisfies its manic urges.