Similar to how Trollhunter was a new take on the old mythical creatures, trolls, Raw, too, was a new take on an old favorite topic, cannibalism. Using Silence of the Lambs as my context, Raw really was a different experience. Of course, Hannibal Lecter looks much scarier than the innocent-looking Justine, no one would guess that she’s actually a cannibal. Raw is still pretty much a horror film. Yet, the film is more than just that. The film also touches up on an awakening of the self and a coming-of-age. Somehow, this acceptance of the self also exudes feminist ideals in a very clever way.

Raw is probably one of the most disturbing films I have watched, along with Apocalypto (2006) and Jeepers Creepers (2001). The scenes when Justine ate a raw rabbit’s liver, when Alexia was trying to give Justine a bikini wax, when she cut her finger off and Justine ate it, and when they were at the morgue (I can go on and on…) are among the plenty scenes that are just way too much to handle, I had to cover my eyes. However, different from the other disturbing films I mentioned, Raw had some quirky and comedic scenes, which help make the film more dynamic and fun to watch. An example of this would be the iconic scene when Alexia and Justine peed while standing up. The whole class burst out laughing, and I laughed with them. It might come off as a joke on the surface. But now, when I think about it deeper, the scene actually hints to women empowerment: indeed, what men can do, women can do too!

It is true that college is a time of self-discovery. And Justine demonstrates this explicitly. During her time in college, she did not just have a complete 180° transformation from being vegetarian to straight up cannibal, she also had a sexual awakening. Justine’s solo dress-up grinding scene in front of a mirror was weird and quite funny, to be honest. But it can also be considered as one of her ways of exploring herself and trying out new things, no matter how strange it may seem. Justine’s 2 major awakenings were both manifested in her sex scene with Adrien. Not only did she lose her virginity in that scene, but she also ecstatically bit her own arm for satisfaction. A coincidence? I don’t think so. This scene was ingenious and well-thought-out, in my opinion, as it successfully encapsulates Justine’s new-found identity.

The fact that the condition traces up from her mother to her sister, expresses female power. The men in their lives, such as her father and Adrien, learned to live with it with no conditions. The way Justine gave in to her desires and embraced herself despite it being a challenge to social norms illustrates a sense of might, power, and courage. And with her father’s expression of acceptance towards her identity by showing her his scars at the end of the film, surely, nothing can stop her now.

There are many ways to describe this lip-biting (pun intended) movie, but the best phrase that fully encapsulates the movie is “a realistic zombie movie”.

There are many jaw dropping scenes in this psychological horror movie. The movie features a vegetarian teenager that studies in one of the most prestigious veterinary schools in Germany. She was a gifted student that aced nearly every test. Her cannibalistic instincts are awakened once she eats a raw rabbit kidney for her initiation in the school. After the rabbit kidney, she starts to crave for meat – specifically raw meat. She would go on frenzies by looking for raw meat everywhere she met until eventually, there was literally nothing that could satisfy her other than the taste of blood.

After she got the taste of human meat from her sister’s finger—which was undoubtedly the most graphic and shocking scene in the entire film. The scene leaves no room for the viewer to breathe. As I was watching the scene along with my classmates, I could not help but scream and cover my eyes as she devoured her sister’s finger as if it was a piece of chicken wings. The scene ended with her eating it to the bone as her sister woke up to what she was doing.

After the incident, the movie revolves around her denying her craving for human flesh. Her sister, who was a cannibal like her, tried to show her how to get “fresh meat” by causing cars to crash and eating off the victims’. Additionally, she would get serious allergies and caused her to hallucinate. She even tried to eat her hair to satisfy her cravings. Her denial bubbled up her cravings until she could not handle it anymore. Her built up desires and cravings led her to biting one of her schoolmates’ lip when she was at a party. This caused her to have a reputation of being a freak.

The movie ends with her dad revealing that her mom is just like her, and how the cannibalism runs in their family. Furthermore, he mentions how he allows her to eat parts of him to keep her sane by opening his polo and showing her his scars. Through this scene, I realized that this is why they were brought up to be vegetarians – to suppress their cannibalistic nature. It also explains her mom’s aggressiveness when a cafeteria mistakenly put a meatball in her mashed potato.

It is not your typical zombie movie wherein the main characters go on a zombie-killing rampage like in World War Z. What differentiates this horror movie from all the zombie movies I have ever watched is that it feels real. There are no hordes of zombies running towards the main characters or human beings trying to kill each other in order to save themselves. Just seemingly ordinary people who are mentally sick. I personally find this much more terrifying.

After watching the movie, I became skeptical about who I was close to and thinking to myself: “I wonder if he/she is actually a cannibal”. Then it hit me: this is what a psychological horror is.

The movie left me scarred but interestingly hooked. For some reason, I left the classroom wanting more.

Deemed to celebrate humanity’s greatest taboos– RAW is being critiqued as merely a showy coming-of-age cannibal film, but it truly deserves more credit for that. This film, as a matter of fact, can top your list of the most grotesque films that have ever been made. On the surface level, the scenes can be seen as plainly nasty and absurd. However, it is visceral and elegant in  its artful way of reflecting systemic conflicts that can occur in a daily life of a freshman on her first year of medical school. Julia Ducournau might have possibly utilized the indulgence of human meat as a metaphor for an adolescent’s sexual awakening but more than that, the evolution of identity and discovery of a sense of self is explored all throughout the film. Justine, an archetypal vegetarian virgin, a rookie in the vast complex extremities of the playing field, represents a huge percentage of teenagers who have established a set of values and principles, that are yet to be destroyed by the evils of the environment.

Growing up in a conservative, vegetarian and veterinarian family, Justine seeks to excel in school, putting other unsubstantial things aside. Initially resistant and repulsed by the disheveled chaos in medical school, she suddenly discovers how a tiny nibble of raw rabbit flesh can stir up something intrinsic in her- a hunger for something uncanny she never really acknowledged.

Momentarily, a significant scene is shown in the film where Adrien her roomate, finds her snudging into the refrigerator tearing into a raw chicken breast, preconditioning her indulgences in the near future. With the plot build-up, it can be divided into the various metamorphic stages of a creature turning into its most natural form, similarly to how a werewolf will first turn on its first full moon– this film showcased Justine on her way to becoming what she truly is.

Another perplexing but powerful scene was when Justine, slowly watched the blood trickle from her sister’s fingers on her hand, and her eyes were glistening as she knew what she wanted to do with it. The moment she gave into her desires, lead her to a lifestyle that is so drastically contradictory to the philosophy she was raised with. Here we see her character evolution, from a reserved girl who felt lost within herself, to a brazen young woman who has finally accepted herself and found her place.

Beguiled into her newfound lust for human flesh, Justine craves for someone to understand her, thinking that it was her sister who would help control her, it was surprisingly her homosexual roommate Adrien. Given that he was able to guide her and watch out for her and she actually felt safe with him– it was truly terrifying to find him lifeless at the end of the film. Suddenly the mood from being so terrifying became so heart-wrenching for quite a few minutes. This then shows a distressing fact that with her situation, the people close to her are bound to get hurt.

The element of relatability is evident in the film given lots of realities are portrayed. A concrete one which is the rookie initiation that is played out in the first scenes of the film, included buckets of blood, delirious parties, body paint carnality and forced feeding of raw animal parts. Tackling peer pressure, conformity to one’s environment and unending indulgence, Raw is intimate and analogous to an adolescent growing up. This realism leads Justine’s bloody rights of passage to go beyond callousness into something custom-built for the audience.

 

 

Never would I thought that I would enjoy a coming-of-age movie that had one of the weirdest twists of all—a young veterinarian student struggling with her craving for human flesh. Before watching the film, I thought I would be scared out of my mind with the gore and jump scares that a normal horror movie would entail. But Raw had that eerie ambiance and familiar charm that leaves you wanting more.

First, one of the most noteworthy things was the acting. Garance Marillierwas excellent in portraying the life of Justineso smoothly that the audience tends to forget that this is a work of fiction and would never happen in real life. It was through her subtle reactions and genuine ways of responding to a situation that made people think, in some strange way, that they may see themselves in her. The cannibalism aside, Justineis relatable in the sense that she just wants to fit in, make her parents proud, and find her tribe in college. People are exposed to a lot of things during this time, and “going with the flow” is just one of the coping mechanisms that we see here, even though we learn that it is bad to repress these things and keep these scary thoughts to ourselves.

The chemistry between the different actors worked so well. Having Alexia, her sister, and Adrien, her roommate and close friend,as the supporting characters brought different perspectives and voices to the story. Alexiasort of acted as the devil’s advocate in a sense that she made her do things she wouldn’t want to—in order to “enjoy life more”. Adrien, on the other hand, was very supportive and caring towards her even though he didn’t understand what she was going through at first. Putting the two together with Justine, someone so passive and agreeable, made a very interesting trio.

Lastly, coming out of the movie, aside from having to process just exactly what happened throughout all the gory and “WTF” moments, it made me think more about life and freedom. The last scene, where the father revealed to Justine that her mom was actually a cannibal, paired together with the fact that they were raised to be vegetarian, made an interesting juxtaposition. Perhaps the movie is a lesson to both parents and children that are about to depart from their homes and go off into college, or experience the real world for the first time. That no matter how much you try to shield your child from the “bad things”, or the truth, it will find its way to them no matter what. And once this freedom is tasted by them who was once sheltered, and deprived of it, it will leave them wanting more and even be unable to control the craving.

Whether you choose to look at the film in a literal or a figurative sense, a lot of praise needs to be given to Raw. It disturbs you, but you can’t look away. It’s about cannibalism, but it’s also so much more. You can’t help but root for the characters even though what they’re doing is completely wrong and out of the realms of what is morally correct to do. Yet Ducournau gives us a show while breaking the norms of what a coming-of-age/horror/drama film should be.

The film, Timecrimes, talks about Nacho Vigalondo’s cinematic masterpiece about a time-travel thriller plot that opens with a man name Hector who finds himself eyeing this beautiful women by the woods who happened to be undressing. Once he starts investigating what was happening, he was then stabbed by this man with a pair of scissors whose head was wrapped in blood-drenched bandages. Seeing this, Hector flees the scene and ends up in a science laboratory when a scientist asks him to get inside this weird-looking device which happened to be a time machine. From then on, the upcoming events started to unravel and create chaos to Hector and his wife. The essence of the film was how it pulls you deeper and deeper into each and every scene. It’s like getting stuck in quicksand, the more you move, the more you are swallowed. This is what Hector and the audience felt for each time he climbed into that time machine. For each action, there are several twists that come after it. Slowly but surely, keeping the audience entertained and asking for more. 

After I watched “Timecrimes”, it was very confusing to figure out the timeline of the whole thing. Time-travelling still leaves me confused, as there are different kinds of time-travelling that continue to manifest in several movies. Such as in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and Hermione go back in time and save Buckbeak, during that same timeline, there were two pairs of Hermione and Harry. We also are exposed to the kind of time travel that when you undo something in the past, it affects the present, such as in Back to the Future. But with this film, “Timecrimes”, it left me with so many questions that I wanted to ask after the end of the film. Who or what started the loop? Did Hector get arrested? Did the loop close eventually? Did the scientist plan everything? 

Little did I know that, whatever was previewed in the film, stays in the film. There is no point asking whether someone started the loop or not. The reason why we ask this or why we usually think this way is because we see time as very linear. We wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night, then repeat. There is a start and an end. But that did not matter in the film, like many anti-cinema elements, linear is not one of them, and neither was the Hector’s time travelling. In fact, the loop that caused the whole should not have mattered because the loop just seemed to have existed, there was no beginning nor end to it. 

But, what specifically caught my eye in the film is its mix of genre. It can definitely pass off as horror, thriller and science fiction genre at the same time, with small bits of humour that was dotted across it. For a low budget film, it all made sense, there was no need for some heavy machinery or editing to show the brilliance of time travelling. Vigalondo perfectly executed each and every scene and was well thought of. 

The Edukators was a classic european film which tries to depict a form of robin hood but instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, they try to send a message to all wealthy individuals/families that comfortability is not acceptable with regards to their lifestyle. What I feel the “Edukators” are trying to demonstrate with their acts is that they are anti capitalistic and are trying to advocate for socialism. In this respect, I found the movie interesting as they were taking the fight into their own hands. But it is all about perception as how would the edukators know what is too much money to be had? Who gives them the power to decide?

I see the movie as a political movement trying to be created by the youth as they crave a sense of change in the way things are run in that time’s society. The only problem is deciding where to start and struggling with the process of doing so. And so with this combo, a juvenile idea was born of desperation which involved breaking and entering and even kidnapping. What it shows however is the struggle of the people at that time who are helpless and are in desperate need for change. This is all because no real way to channel the pent of anger of politics is being adapted.