Skip to content
Raw centres around freshman University student and vegetarian Justine (Garance Marillier) who, together with her biology class, are liberally splattered with animal blood as part of an initiation, leaving her with a huge rash. It also doesn’t help that this vegetarian was also cajoled into eating raw meat.
This leads her to getting a taste for meat, which makes her exceptionally ill, but then just look at the type of meat she’s eating…
The film is an interesting concept, but it really doesn’t make a lick of sense, and you need some element of belevability in there; And talking of licking, there was some eyeball-licking in there… EWW!!!
Despite a great performance from M. Marillier, with good support from Ella Rumpf as her sister Alexia, and Rabah Nait Oufella as best friend Adrien, the first half of Raw is fairly bland, with an urgent need for seasoning, and it takes around 43 minutes becaue we get to the real ‘meat’ of the issue. When it’s at its height, it’s powerful, and it’s more disturbing than entertaining, but still worth watching for those moments.
However, we’re meant to witness this subtle change from vegetarian to cannibal, but it just doesn’t really cut the mustard for me… or cook it in butter. Plus – and maybe this is a French thing – but I was good friends with many friends on my course at Uni, but I never felt the need to go to bed with them!
Raw is out now on Amazon Prime and DVD, and you can click on the packshot for the full-size version.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 98 minutes
Year: 2017
Format: 2.35:1
Rating: 4/10
Director: Julia Ducournau
Producer: Jean des Forêts
Screenplay: Julia Ducournau
Music: Jim Williams
Cast:
Justine: Garance Marillier
Alexia: Ella Rumpf
Adrien: Rabah Nait Oufella
Le père: Laurent Lucas
La mère: Joana Preiss
Le routier: Bouli Lanners
L’Infirmière: Marion Vernoux
Chef du BDE: Thomas Mustin
Bizut réfectoire: Marouan Iddoub
Professeur évaluations: Jean-Louis Sbille
Vétéran cagoulé: Benjamin Boutboul
Vétérane couloir: Anna Solomin
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.