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Five Screenwriting Lessons from Julia Ducournau’s Raw

Reports of viewers fainting or vomiting during its Toronto screenings dominated headlines. Yet Raw is so much more than complex, nuanced, and intelligent than a teenage shock-fest. Rather, it is a brilliantly layered, artful, and darkly funny coming-of-age story.

Julia Ducournau’s Raw–a searing debut– demonstrates a deft hand: a writer/director who understands standard cinematic storytelling yet how to bend it into something personal, strange, unsettling, and affecting.

For screenwriters, Raw is a masterclass in structure, metaphor, and emotional honesty.

Let’s take a bite. (Sorry.)

1. Setting or Situation That’s Compelling (Outside the Main Plot)

One of the first things that strikes the viewer about Raw is its immersive and original setting: a brutal, chaotic French veterinary school. I first heard about the insane hazing practices among the French vets–it is in fact a thing–from Chuck Palahniuk a number of years ago (not certain of the absolute source but he mentions it here). The shit these French kids get up to make American fraternity hazings look like a fucking Vipassana retreat.

So… in Ducournau’s telling, before we know anything about the protagonist Justine, we see:

Paint-covered upperclassmen dragging freshmen from beds
Late-night raves in hallways slick with blood
Raw, animalistic behavior institutionalized

Before we know anything of the horror aspect of the film, the setting itself is fascinating.

A French veterinary college, with its clinical tools, animal dissections, and unspoken codes of conduct, is already unsettling. Add to this in a social hierarchy enforced through ritual humiliation. Something is about to blow.

Takeaway for screenwriters:
Don’t build your story on the plot alone. Choose a setting that can sustain interest, conflict, and create room for metaphor–there’s always something to keep your attention even if the protagonist goes passive for a couple of pages.

Ask:

What world does this story unfold in?
Would I want to watch this world, even without monsters?
How can I make this world reflect, challenge, or heighten theme?

In Raw, the veterinary school acts almost as a character that warps Justine as she struggles to find her place.

2. Layer Multiple Metaphors

On the surface, Raw is about a young woman discovering a taste for human flesh. However, it is also about desire, identity, family pressure, and becoming a monster you didn’t even know existed.

Add to that that Justine herself is not the only one: she is coming of age in a family of monsters. She experiences transformations:

Sexual (understanding her own desires)
Animalistic (learning to embrace instinct)
Social (experiencing peer pressure and isolation)
Familial (uncovering dark truths about her lineage)

Justine is cloistered; her parents raised her vegetarian. They did not tell her why.

Alexia, Justine’s sister, is an upperclassman at the same vet school. Alexia represent’s Justine’s potential fate. As Justine unravels, she is caught between expectation and instinct, shame and liberation.

The metaphor is never one-dimensional. It’s:

A dark family inheritance
Adulthood comes with appetites
Purportedly civilized people are the most repressed and dangerous

For screenwriters:
Don’t settle for one metaphor; use layers. For example, you might think:

“This is a metaphor for puberty” → but also social conformity
“This is about sexuality” → but also female rage
“This is about family pressure” → but also predestined fate

Stack metaphors. Let them conflict and resonate. What was a simple story becomes unforgettable.

3. Show Female Bodies and Sexuality Without Shame or Moralizing

While horror is one of the rare genres in which it is normal to have a female protagonist, the women in horror are often “virgins” or “whores” – and you can guess which one tends to make it out alive.

In Raw, by contrast, female bodies bleed, itch, transform, and desire—without ever being fetishized or punished.

Justine’s transformation is physical. She scratches her skin until it bleeds. She vomits. She wakes up in a sweat. She grows aroused, confused. Hunger overwhelms her. Her body is not artificially turned into a symbol of purity or corruption—it’s just hers.

Ducournau films this with a clinical, almost documentary eye.

The same goes for female sexuality:

There’s a pivotal sex scene between Justine and her roommate Adrien that’s messy, primal, and liberating
The film doesn’t treat virginity as a prize or sex as a moral test
Female desire is never mocked or stylized—it’s allowed to exist

For screenwriters (especially male screenwriters):

Write female characters as experiencing bodies, not idealized objects
Avoid the tired Madonna/whore binary
Normalize the gross, the weird, the shameful—because that’s in all of us (even the ladies)
Don’t impose a moral arc on sexual experiences—let these be part of character growth

Ducournau writes with empathy and intimacy, not pity or intrusion. That’s what makes Justine such a compelling protagonist—even as we watch her appetites grow horrific.

4. Use Unpredictable, Unreliable Mentors to Build Tension

If you’re a screenwriter familiar with story structure, you may be tempted to follow a familiar formula: hero meets mentor, mentor gives wisdom, hero grows.

But in Raw, mentors are a trap.

Justine has two main guides:

Adrien, her gay roommate, who becomes a kind of big brother—flirtatious, grounded, seemingly wise.
Alexia, her older sister, who seems to know everything and leads Justine through the school’s labyrinth of rituals.

Both seem like potential allies. Both betray her.

Adrien breaks her trust—by ignoring her boundaries in numerous cases, most obviously by sleeping with her–notably the first time she’s ever slept with anyone–in a moment when what she really needed was the support of a friend.

Alexia, meanwhile, teaches Justine how to perform, how to kill, how to “fit in.” But she’s not a stable figure. She’s manic, violent, and dangerous.

Alexia, we learn, is the monster Justine might well become if she cannot learn to control her natural appetites.

The mentors in Raw offer confusion, not clarity. Their lessons are incomplete and often self-serving. Justine must grow not because she receives guidance, but because her guidance turns out to be pretty shit.

Screenwriting takeaway:

Make your mentor characters complex, flawed, and capable of betrayal
Let their motives be murky or personal
Allow them to reflect different possible fates for the protagonist
Use mentor figures to subvert the audience’s trust

A mentor that destabilizes rather than guides creates unpredictability and deeper character conflict.

5. Start With the Action—Force the Audience Into the Story

Raw opens on a forced car crash—a silent, mysterious figure walks onto the road, causing an accident. We don’t know who they are. We don’t know why they did it.

Visceral, immediate, and disturbing, it provides an emotional prelude to the next two hours.

Only later do we learn that the crash is Alexia’s preferred hunting method. For the audience, it’s a jolt out of nowhere: this cold open primes us for extreme violence, dangerous weirdness.

Then the story begins in earnest: Justine and her parents arrive at vet school. Yet because we’ve already been unnerved, tension simmers under even mundane scenes.

Start with action that hints at the world’s logic, even if the characters haven’t yet encountered it.

Why this works:

It disorients the audience, making them lean in
It raises questions without answering them
It sets the tone as unsafe and unpredictable
It builds suspense through dramatic irony—whatever the hell is going on, we know something is happening – this is more than than the protagonist knows

For your own scripts:

Open with a visual, high-stakes moment that speaks to the central theme or horror
Avoid prologues filled with voiceover or explanation
A question is more engaging than an answer
Let the audience feel the danger before they know what it is

By the time Justine discovers her appetites, we already know the world she’s entering isn’t safe.

Final Thoughts: Go for the Throat

Raw doesn’t apologize for being intense, or strange, or deeply personal.

For screenwriters, the lessons are clear:

Anchor your story in a visually rich, thematically potent world
Let metaphor layer and unfold—don’t force it
Write bodies as real, complex, and contradictory
Make mentors ambiguous or even dangerous
Start strong—with action, ambiguity, and mood

Raw could have easily been “another cannibal film.” Instead, it’s a story about hunger—for belonging, for experience, for identity—that stays with you long after the credits roll.

Use these techniques to let your film do the same.