Film Road to Halloween: Raw (2016)

The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 54 days to go.

The horror genre has frequently mined coming-of-age, puberty, losing virginity and other teenage rites-of-passage as a rich seam for material. There is much horror to be found particularly by extrapolating from what many teenage girls go through any way; such as periods and possible attempts to control their own bodies through eating disorders, as well as the threat of sexual abuse.

The teenage years dovetail with horror so well because as well as the physical and hormonal changes, there are the challenges of peer pressure, bullying and hazing to contend with. These themes have been addressed through the decades, from Carrie (1976), to Heathers (1988), through to The Faculty (1998), onto Jennifer’s Body (2009) and recently It Follows (2014).

“There is much horror to be found particularly by extrapolating from what many teenage girls go through any way.”

French horror film Raw demonstrates that peer pressures don’t end with High School and in fact, can get even worse at University. Justine (Garance Marillier) is a sweet, swotty, vegetarian virgin who sets out to attend the same veterinary school as her older, more rebellious sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf). There, she meets her roommate Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella) and on the first night, they are roused from their beds by the “elders” and put through various hazing rituals. The next day, they are doused in blood and given raw rabbit kidneys to eat, which is clearly upsetting to the vegetarian Justine.

Justine develops a horrific rash, then notices that she has started to crave meat. After a waxing accident leads to Alex’s finger being cut off, Justine develops a taste for human flesh. Her burgeoning sexual desire is strongly linked to the urge to bite people. As Justine tries to suppress her impulses, she starts shaking and sweating like a drug-addict going through cold turkey.

There are multiple metaphorical themes running through Raw and one is surely the dichotomies of austere vegetarianism vs gluttonous binge-eating (especially of meat and blood). There is also the classic virgin vs slut struggle, which is a feature of most teen girl stories. Julia Ducournau is linking carnal desires with carnivorous ones – craving sex and flesh seems to be giving into our basest, most primal instincts.

“Julia Ducournau is linking carnal desires with carnivorous ones.”

The setting of the vet school seems influenced by JG Ballard, particularly High-Rise (which, coincidentally, was also adapted into a film in 2016). The school’s Brutalist architecture combined with the utter carnage of the parties and hazing makes it seem like Justine has entered a dystopian world. Ducournau inter-cuts shots of the animals they are studying throughout the film – from sweating and snorting horses to the cadavers of dogs.

In an early scene, Justine argues that raping monkeys is no different to raping humans. She views animals and humans as equal. Once she starts to crave animal meat, it doesn’t seem that huge a leap to move onto human flesh. The vet school is combined with (or next door to) a medical school. The med students are depicted as having the same cavalier attitude to studying and treating their patients as the vets do. A doctor that Justine visits describes how they refused to treat a fat patient, claiming that they couldn’t find her veins. Adrien tells her that they play a game where they get drunk while on-call. If called upon, they vomit, treat their patients, then get right back to it.

[Spoilers] Justine and Alex argue with one another and Alex is particularly cruel and harsh to Justine, but they have the physical closeness of sisters. They share clothes, they practice urinating standing up like men and Alex waxes Justine’s bikini line. It becomes apparent that Alex is going through the same thing as Justine (and it is revealed at the end that it has been inherited from their mother).

“Raw is a worthy addition to the teen horror genre, particularly focusing on teen girls and body horror.”

Alex tries to teach her younger sister how to cope with it, by demonstrating how she causes car accidents so she can feed on the victims. However, things come to a head between the sisters and they physically fight, tearing and biting one another. The physical closeness becomes violent and aggressive. Alex represents what will happen to Justine if she gives into her urges.

Raw is a worthy addition to the teen horror genre, particularly focusing on teen girls and body horror. It is about the horror of outside pressures to fit in and prove yourself “worthy,” as well as internal pressures about the body, sex and desire. It is very much about denial vs succumbing to natural impulses, from socially acceptable ‘vices’ (eating meat, having sex) to crossing the line into hurting and killing humans.

With a trio of compelling central performances from Marillier, Rumpf and Oufella, Raw provides exciting actors and a writer-director who should all be eagerly anticipated, in terms of their next projects. If you haven’t watched it yet, what are you waiting for?