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If your taste in horror runs toward the smart and sick, French filmmaker Julia Ducournau's disturbing feature debut, "Raw," is a worthwhile kick in the gut.
This gory, unsettling movie gained a reputation on the festival circuit — including a stop at Sundance in January — for making moviegoers pass out. The NuArt Theatre in Los Angeles, where the movie is also opening this weekend, is planning to distribute barf bags to patrons, just in case. If you're not 100 percent sure you can handle this sort of thing, don't buy a ticket.
It starts with Justine (Garance Marillier), a 16-year-old whiz kid about to start at veterinary school. Justine is following the career path of her parents (Laurent Lucas, Joana Preiss) and her older sister, Alex (Ella Rumpf), an upperclassman at the same school.
Justine and her fellow freshmen are immediately inundated by the older students' brutal hazing rituals. One of them involves eating a piece of raw rabbit kidney — something Justine, raised a strict vegetarian, refuses to do. But under peer pressure, mostly from Alex, she takes a bite.
Not long after, Justine develops a red, itchy rash all over her body. She also realizes, after that first taste of animal, that she wants more. First it's Salisbury steak from the cafeteria, or raw chicken filets from the fridge that her gay roommate, Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella), put in their dorm-room fridge. But soon, after an incident with Alex, Justine discovers what she really craves: human flesh.
Ducournau, who wrote and directed the movie, creates a daring, urgent story centered on Justine's awakening, with her cannibal desires running parallel to her sexual awareness and her sudden entry into adulthood.
Ducournau, a rookie director employing a veteran's skills, does this sometimes through visual and aural assault, particularly in some crisply staged single-shot party scenes that disorient Justine and the audience in equal measure. She also creates colorful shots where the red of blood becomes a chilling punctuation mark.
Marillier, starring in her first feature, gives an electric performance as Justine, whose awkwardness inexorably gives way to desire and hunger, leading to a shattering conclusion. It's a star-making performance, insistent and alive, that helps make "Raw" a full-blooded horror experience.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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'Raw'
A vegetarian veterinary student develops a taste for human flesh in a horror movie with real bite.
Where • Tower Theatre.
When • Opens Friday, March 24.
Rating • R for aberrant behavior, bloody and grisly images, strong sexuality, nudity, language and drug use/partying.
Running time • 99 minutes; in French with subtitles.