[5]

A strict vegetarian (Garance Marillier) attends a veterinary school where bizarre student hazing creates a craving for hunger that can’t be satiated. Raw may sound like a gory horror film, but it really isn’t that sort of movie. It plays out more like a Twilight Zone episode, complete with a cute explanatory epilogue. It takes a long time for the main character to discover her cannibalistic desires. I was getting a little impatient with the movie, and once it finally shifted gears, it wasn’t quite dramatic or visceral enough for me. In fact, the thing that I will remember most about the movie — what I would call the most horrific part — has nothing to do with cannibalism. It’s an early scene in which students are knocking out a horse to prep it for surgery. The horse is terrified and so was I, with all the white-garbed kids surrounding it while it’s hanging in an elaborate contraption with a tube forced down its throat. After that scene, eating a girl’s finger just wasn’t that big of a deal to me.