VOD Review: Raw (2017)

"Shocking, but not as much as you'd think."

When Raw made its run of the festival circuit last year, there were reports of audience members passing out, throwing up, and fleeing from theaters in a panic. Those reports, coupled with the movie's subject matter, naturally had us expecting a disgusting gore-fest that would leave us retching.

Unfortunately, Raw never quite gets to that level, and that's fine, but it certainly could have used a bit more of a nasty punch. It's still a great film, and it's definitely disturbing, but it left us a bit underwhelmed in that respect.

Justine is a 16-year-old from a strictly vegetarian family who is about to go away to veterinarian school; French veterinarian school, which means that there's going to be lots of sex, parting, and hazing of the weirdest kind. Her older, rebellious sister, Alexia is already a student there, but that doesn't mean that the hazing will be any easier for Justine, and in fact, it might even be harder.

COLLEGE: THE BEST TIME OF A YOUNG GIRLS LIFE.

After being forced to eat a rabbit kidney, Justine becomes ill, her skin breaks out in a nasty rash, and she begins developing a taste for flesh. At the same time, her sexuality is starting to blossom, so whomever she becomes intimate with is in danger of getting a chunk bitten out of them.

YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO LOOK OUT FOR THE BITERS.

Is Justine becoming a cannibal? Does she just need to get laid? Are veterinarian schools in France really like this? Far be it from us to spoil anything for you here, but as far as that last question goes, we sure hope so, because it looks like a salaciously good time. Minus the blood, of course.

IT AIN'T EASY BEING A TEENAGE CANNIBAL.

Raw is an odd movie, and a disturbing one. It's an allegory for burgeoning sexuality, and making your own way in the world. It's also about how vegetarians can turn into cannibals if they so much as get one taste of meat. Alright, that last one is pure fantasy, but one that the movie uses as its main template, and it's a terrifying one.

This is a gorgeous film, and one that I dare call artistic. Director Julia Ducournau has quite a visual eye, as well as a knack for telling a compelling story, and one that certainly goes to some dark places to say what it needs to say.

Garance Marillier owned the role of Justine. She started off convincingly as a shy, awkward girl who was out of her social depth, and transitioned into a predatory sex kitten with ease. The scene where she's dancing and making out with the mirror gave us chills.

SHE SHOULD HAVE STUCK TO VEGETABLES.

I understand why women get bikini waxes, but after seeing this movie, I'll never understand why they would want to.

SWEET JESUS, NOOOOOO....

Oh yes, this movie has its share of gore and disturbing scenes, chief amongst them, that damn bikini waxing scene...

FRANCE IS WEIRD.

This movie isn't shy about the sexuality either, although it's not as overtly explicit as we expected it to be.

GOUTE L'ARC-EN-CIEL.

Raw is a stylish, visceral, disturbing, thought-provoking movie, although for a cannibal movie that uses teen sexuality to show us how tough it is growing up in this day and age, it didn't really push the envelope to that place where so many other French Horror flicks have gone in recent years.

It's still one to watch though, if you've got the stomach for it.

A

Raw is available now on VOD

Garance Marillier and Ella Rumpf are in this.

Blu-ray Review: The Treatment (2015)

There's something about Foreign Crime Thrillers that captivates and unsettles us like no other. I don't know if it's because they're grittier, or because they tend to feel heavier and more realistic than most of their U.S. counterparts do, but they always seem to get to us in a more profound way.

To us, The Treatment plays much like I Saw the Devil; it's a fantastic, well-made movie on all fronts, but damn it if it isn't also bleak and uncomfortable as hell to watch at the same time. We're glad that Artsploitation Films sees the beauty and merit in disturbing films like this, or else we probably wouldn't even know that it exists, and what a shame that would be.

Disclaimer: We don't usually put warnings before our reviews, because you're adults, and as Horror fans, you're built tough enough to endure even the nastiest of on-screen things. If however the topic of sexual abuse, especially as it pertains to children, is something that you just cant (or choose not to) deal with while watching a movie, then you may want to skip this one, as it centers around that topic in a very real way.

This is a fantastic movie in many ways, but it's also a very tough one to watch.

Detective Nick Cafmeyer has had a rough life. As a child, he witnessed his younger brother being abducted by a local creeper, only to never see him again. He has had to live with the fact that he was probably abused and murdered and worse, ever since, and it has made him into a dark shell of a man. It doesn't help matters that the not only did the guy who did went free because of insufficient evidence, but that he still shows up every year on Nick's birthday to taunt him about it. Fucker.

THAT SON OF A BITCH!

When a local boy does missing, after his family was bound & gagged while an unseen intruder abused him and then took him away, Nick becomes convinced that it is somehow connected to his brother's disappearance. As he delves deeper and deeper into the sick world of the pedophiles that seem to be all around him, Nick begins to lose his shit, and rightly so.

MAN, YOU NEVER WATCH A BAG FULL OF VIDEOTAPES GIVEN TO YOU BY A CHILD MOLESTER. NOT EVER. 

We're not going to say anything else about the plot here, because to do so would do this film a great disservice by spoiling its twists, turns, and reveals. We will say though that you had better be prepared to flinch uncomfortably, and even look away from the screen from time to time, because this movie gets progressively darker as the minutes go by, and that darkness never really lets up. 

HE NEEDS A HUG. AND SO DID WE AFTER WATCHING THIS MOVIE.

The Treatment is gritty, realistic Crime Thriller that dives into the topics of child abuse, pedophilia, and even child pornography head first, and holds nothing back in its attempt to tell its story. Most of the nastiness is alluded to, and it's talked about rather than shown, but there are some pictures and glimpses of video footage depicting said acts that are tough to see. I personally had to look away a few times.

As the film shows us more and more about what happened to the abducted children, it gets pretty uncomfortable to watch. There's one big reveal which makes the depraved goings on turn from horrible, to downright abominable, but that's really the strength of the film; uncovering the everyday atrocity of child abuse, and throwing it right in our face. It wasn't done to be exploitational or shocking, but that doesn't make it any easier to stomach. In fact, the dead-serious tone of the movie might have made it even worse. 

And that ending...

Uncomfortable subject matter aside, The Treatment is a well-made Thriller that had us chewing our nails as its "whodunit" plot unfolded. It was like Se7en meets 8MM, with shades of Prisoners (2013) thrown into the mix, only the resulting film was seen through a much more disturbing lens. Director Hans Herbots knows his pacing, and he certainly knows how to tell an effective, gripping story. If this level of storytelling is what's going on in Belgium, then we need to see more Belgian films.

As we're not up on much of Belgian cinema (or its acting talent), most of the cast were new to us. Geert Van Rampelberg (now that's a name) was excellent as Nick, and after seeing what he is capable of as an actor, we're going to have to go seek out some of his TV work like Salamander and Cordon. Hopefully we'll see him in some more movies down the line. Laura Verlinden was also great as one of the victims of "The Troll."

The entire cast did their jobs really well.  

THAT POOR WOMAN...

When your kid tells you that there's a troll at his window, listen to him. Also, there are some sick fucking people in this world, and they all need to go to sleep tonight and not wake up in the morning.

OR MAYBE WE JUST LET THE COPS PUT THEM ALL DOWN. THAT'LL WORK TOO.

If you can deal with its tough subject matter, The Treatment is an excellent film. We're suckers for any story involving a man on the edge trying to get justice (or revenge) for those who have been wronged, especially when those poor unfortunates are children, and that is exactly what this movie is.

Artsploitation Films has been bringing some fantastic foreign genre movies to the global market for years now, but they've really kicked it into high gear in 2015 with movies like Cub, Horsehead, Reckless, and now, The Treatment. Going forward, we'll be seeking out anything that they release in the U.S., and so should you.

A-

The Treatment is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

Laura Verlinden is a Belgian QT whom we hope to see more of in the future.

DVD Review: Cub (2015)

(aka Welp.)
Release Date: Jan 30th, 2015 (GER)
Country: Belgium.
Rating: NR.
Written by: Jonas Govaerts and Roel Mondelaers.
Directed by: Jonas Govaerts.
Starring: Maurice Luijten, Stef Aerts, Titus De Voogdt, and Evelien Bosmans.

Until Cub came along, the only Flemish language Horror film that we'd seen is a disturbing little oddity called Left Bank. There are plenty of other Belgian Horror & Thriller movies out there that are co-productions with other countries (Calvaire, Sl8n8, and Vinyan come to mind), but they aren't wholly products of Belgium. Not that it's a big deal or anything, we just find it notable that Cub is a purely Belgian Horror movie (Flemish language and all), and that it's also really good. I guess we're just happy that Belgium has a new, high-profile Horror flick that they can call their own. We're sentimental like that.

Sam is a twelve-year-old kid with a troubled past, who also sucks at being a Cub Scout; he's always late for meetings and trips; he lies and makes things up; he wets his sleeping bag; he stares uncomfortably at the other boys in the shower... all of which leads to him being picked on by most of the other kids in his scout pack, and even one of its adult leaders. Sounds like their weekend camping trip to a remote and supposedly haunted part of the Belgian wilderness is going to be fun times for all. Except Sam.

REALLY, HE'S JUST MISUNDERSTOOD.

In an effort to scare the piss out of the kids, the scout leaders tell them the creepy story of Kai; a werewolf boy that is rumored to stalk the local woods at night, and who just might be on the hunt for Cub Scout blood! This Urban Legend turns out to be more true than they could have ever imagined when Sam sees Kai in the woods. When he tells the others about the encounter, they beat him up and call him names, because they hate him. At least the sexy Jasmin feels bad for him and tries to protect him. *What a hot, young chick is doing going camping with a pack of Cub Scouts is another matter altogether.

"ALRIGHT GUYS, RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KILL SAM AND LEAVE HIM BURIED IN THE WOODS."

So it turns out that not only is Kai real, but that he has an equally creepy father, and they really enjoy booby-trapping the forest and killing people for fun. It's a bonding experience. Of course this means that Sam, Jasmine, and the rest of the Cub Scout pack are most likely going to die painful deaths... unless of course Sam loses his shit and kills Kai and his father first, which could very well happen. Mass child murder ensues.

PRETTY SURE THAT'S THE CREEPY VERSION OF THE MASK FROM CRASH BANDICOOT.

The first thing that we have to say about Cub is that it's a gorgeous movie to behold. As striking as its visuals are, you'd never know that this movie was partially crowd-funded by looking at it. It honestly looks every bit as good as most bigger Studio pictures do, and maybe even better in some ways. Cub also has a rhythmic and intense score that reminds us a lot of something you might hear in an older Giallo flick, which is always a great thing in our book. Hell, one of the character's ringtones was the theme to Suspiria, so at least some of those Giallo-esque touches had to be a deliberate homage of sorts.

Cub was also a nasty, bloody little movie.

Time and time again, it's the European Horror movies that tend to thrill us the most. They usually, unashamedly go to the places that most U.S. Horror flicks don't, and they do so with a style and voice all their own. If Cub were made here in the U.S. (and given its content, I can't imagine that it ever would be), it would most likely be watered down to a "safe" and morally acceptable level. We Americans seem to be able to accept kids doing the killing onscreen, but kids being killed onscreen? Well that is somehow too taboo for our delicate Western sensibilities. We're definitely hypocritical like that.

We give Jonas Govaerts and Roel Mondelaers all the credit in the world for having the balls to take the story of Cub to the dark places that it needed to go to be effective, and not holding back on the nasty stuff when things do get dark. And they definitely do.

We also found it really odd that as unfamiliar with the cast as we were, they still somehow felt familiar to us. Maybe that's a testament to the good job that they did, or maybe it's because we're delusional. I can't say for sure. Either way, the leads in this movie all did a great job, especially the young Maurice Luijten. For what was essentially his first big acting job, he was fantastic as Sam. Evelien Bosmans was also fairly impressive as Jasmin.

TOO CUTE TO DIE.

The twist at the end threw us for a bit of a loop, and the more we think about it, the more we don't like it. It works well for the story, and it was nice to see a Horror movie do something so unexpected for a change, but we would have rather seen things go the other way. We can't get any more specific than that, lest we spoil things, but you'll understand what we mean when you see it.

POOR SAM. EVEN THE OUTCAST FERAL WILDERNESS BOY WANTS TO KILL HIM.

Why does the poor dog always have to suffer? And in this case, why so horribly?!?

SPUDS MACKENZIE IS IN THIS.

The first kill doesn't happen until about 35 minutes in, but once the seal is broken, there are some nice gory set pieces throughout the remainder of the movie. The last 15 minutes are particularly brutal.

THIS SCENE RIGHT HERE...

There's one scene of light sexual activity, but being that this is a movie about Cub Scouts, there's nothing naked or steamy to be found here.

Even in Belgium, camping is for suckers. Also, so is being a Cub Scout.

WE KNOW WHAT THOSE KIDS ARE GOING TO BE DREAMING ABOUT TONIGHT.

Cub is a movie that is as exciting as it is disturbing, and that's just how we like it. It's not a perfect movie, but it hit enough of the right notes to make it a really good one. We'll definitely be looking forward to seeing whatever it is that director Jonas Govaerts does next. 

B+

If you really want to see Cub, you can order it on Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon.de right now, provided you have some sort of Region-Free player. If not, then you'll have to wait patiently until it's picked up for U.S. distribution, which will hopefully be be sometime later this year.

Evelien Bosmans is a Belgian QT pie.