This 'Raw' Clip Will Make You Want To Peel Off Your Own Skin

A French cannibal movie that’s so graphic and disturbing people walked out of the theater during its film festival premiere? Yes, please. A movie like Julia Ducournau’s Raw already has my undivided attention. I’m not usually too squeamish when it comes to horror, but with this new clip, you get a stomach-churning taste of what compelled multiple viewers to beat a hasty retreat. Let’s just say, it’s impressively icky, and not in a purely gratuitous gore kind of way, it’s just icky.

See, aren’t you glad you watched that? When she starts frantically scraping at that rash on her arm…gaahh, that’s enough to make me want to crawl out of my own skin. There's just an innate, gut-level revulsion response when I watch this. I'm not particularly squeamish, so that doesn't happen often. Well done.

If this clip is what Raw is showing us ahead of time, I have to wonder what the hell they have in store for us when we sit our butts down in theaters.

Here’s the synopsis for Raw:

Stringent vegetarian Justine (Garance Marillier) encounters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world during her first week at veterinary school. Desperate to fit in, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time. The young woman soon experiences terrible and unexpected consequences as her true self begins to emerge.

Raw debuted at Cannes last year and made a few appearances at film festivals along the way, garnering more and more hype at each successive stop—at least among those of us who enjoy movies where people eat other people, as well as a few other iron-stomach types. It basically sounds like a coming of age story, except, you know, with cannibalism. And it’s also supposed to be incredible, so I’m more than game.

Check out the red band trailer. It’s brutal and bloody but also oddly beautiful and moving. Raw is definitely not going to be what you expect when you hear the phrase “cannibal movie.”

Focus Features starts dropping Raw into theaters a week from today on March 10. It’s going to be a gradual roll out—it doesn’t open in my neck of the woods until March 24. But I need to do some work and figure out where it’s showing near me.