Yes, 6 out of 10. It's body horror about a vegetarian at vet school, with jump scares and a lot of gore.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
6 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Medium
You'll look at your dinner differently for a night, mostly if it was rare.
DOG
Dog: not fine
not fine, and the dog's body appears on screen several times.
Ruling: Skip it if you faint at the sight of blood, because this coming-of-age story has a diet problem.
Raw runs ninety-nine minutes. A lifelong vegetarian starts veterinary school, goes through a week of hazing, and develops a new interest in meat. The school's dining hall menu is the least of her problems.
The premise, briefly
Justine, a lifelong vegetarian, starts at the veterinary school her sister attends, and a hazing ritual leaves her with cravings that she can't explain.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Justine finds Adrien dead in her bed and Alexia covered in blood on the floor. Alexia goes to prison for the murder, and Justine goes home, where her father shows her the scars that explain what her mother did to him.
The scene you're dreading
The bikini wax scene, early on: Justine kicks Alexia, the scissors take off Alexia's finger, and Alexia faints. She wakes up to find Justine tasting the blood and eating the finger.
The dog
The dog dies. Alexia's dog Quicky is put down off screen, then his body is dissected in a class and shown several times, bloody and cut open.
It is graphic body horror about appetite and family, and the worst of it comes from Justine's cravings and her sister's lessons.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Rabbit kidneys are not on the first-year syllabus
Justine, a lifelong vegetarian, starts her first term at the veterinary school her older sister Alexia attends and where their parents met. Her roommate on the first night is Adrien, who says he is gay. They go through a week of hazing together. At a party, Alexia shows Justine photographs of earlier classes in which the students are drenched in blood, and one of them includes their parents. The next morning, the new students are splattered with blood and made to swallow raw rabbit kidneys. Justine says no because of her diet, and Alexia pushes her into eating one anyway. Soon afterward, Justine is covered in an itchy rash. A doctor decides it is food poisoning and gives her a cream.
Justine starts craving meat and is ashamed of it. She fails to steal a burger from the cafeteria, so she and Adrien go to a gas station late at night, where nobody will see her eat meat. It does not satisfy her. The next morning she eats raw chicken, and later she throws up a long clump of her own hair that she had been chewing. That night, Alexia tries to give her a bikini wax and goes to trim the wax with a pair of sharp scissors. Justine kicks out at her, and the scissors take off Alexia's own finger by accident.
The finger, and what Alexia tells the parents
This is the scene people brace for, and it comes early. After Alexia faints, Justine takes the finger, tastes the blood, and begins to eat it. When Alexia comes around, she sees Justine doing it. Her cover story for their parents is that her dog, Quicky, got hold of the finger. In the morning Alexia leads Justine out to a deserted road and jumps in front of a car, which crashes into a tree. She then begins eating one of the passengers as a lesson for Justine, and Justine is horrified. Even so, her craving for human meat keeps growing, and she begins to lust after Adrien. At a party, another hazing ritual leaves her making out with a boy, and she bites off the middle of his lip. Later she picks a chunk of it out of her teeth and eats it.
Adrien does not wake up
Justine tries to bite Adrien while they are having sex and bites her own arm instead. At another party she gets very drunk, and Alexia leads her to the morgue. The next day, people at school stare at her. Adrien shows her a video in which Justine crawls on all fours toward a corpse and tries to bite its arm while Alexia cheers her on and a crowd watches. Justine confronts Alexia, and the two fight until other students pull them apart. Afterward they help each other up and walk back to their separate dorms. The following morning, Justine wakes up in bed covered in blood and finds Adrien dead, stabbed in the back and missing most of his right leg. Alexia is slumped on the floor, also bloody. Justine is furious at first, then helps clean them both up in the shower.
The ending, explained
Alexia is sent to prison for killing Adrien, and Justine goes home. Her father tells her that none of it is her fault or her sister's. He explains that when he first got together with their mother, he could not work out why she kept pulling away, and he finally understood on their first kiss, which left a scar on his lip. Then he opens his shirt and shows her the scars and the missing chunks of his chest. He tells Justine that she will find a way to deal with it. The movie ends there, so it does not say what Justine decides to do.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: not fine, and the dog's body appears on screen several times.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Raw scary?
Yes, Raw is a 6 out of 10 with medium dread. It has jump scares, but most of the fear comes from graphic body horror and cannibalism.
How does Raw end?
Alexia goes to prison for killing Adrien, and Justine goes home. Her father shows her the scars and missing chunks of his chest, which he got from her mother, and tells Justine she will find a way through.
Does the dog die in Raw?
Yes, the dog dies in Raw. Alexia's dog Quicky is put down off screen, then his body is dissected in a class, and the film shows it several times, bloody and cut open.
Is there a post-credits scene in Raw?
No. Raw has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Why does Justine crave human meat in Raw?
In Raw, the craving starts after Alexia makes Justine eat a raw rabbit kidney. At the end her father shows her the scars and missing chunks of his chest, which he ties to the first time he kissed her mother.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Raw is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You do not have to sit through ninety-nine minutes of Raw to know what happens. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur the horror for you before you see it.
