Last year when visiting Weekend of Horrors I met the very friendly Marcel Walz, a director who seems to be getting bad reviews at IMDB - but that just encourages me to see his movies. I mean, I’m judging the humanity by looking at the comments on IMDB, so you know what I think about those opinions. Anyway, I also bought Raw: Der Fluch der Grete Müller from him (he was friendly enough to also sign it for me) and then it took me one year to see it. I could say it was because I’ve seen too many found footage films and grown tired of the genre - but I’m not. I still love it and it surprises me how many people (aka IMDB users, and some even more incredibly lazy amateur movie critics thinking their fucking blog have some importance) can be so lazy they can’t see the excellent in movies like Borderlands and Exists. Raw is a very simplistic movie, and maybe a bit too much for its own good. But that doesn’t stop it from being pretty good.
A couple of girls goes out in the forest to shoot a documentary about Grete Müller, a witch which is said to have roamed the countryside a long time ago. The interview a local historian, interview each other about the experiences out in the nature... until one night one of them disappears. The others think she’s just gave up the project and went home - but we know what happen! Soon they’re hunted by something unknown, something that wants them to die!
It’s a bit difficult to write down a story which hardly is a story. This is a very traditional storyline with very little originality, but Walz is - even if you don’t agree with me - a fine storyteller and his talent works extremely good here. We’re talking a standard, generic found footage film which is not boring for one second. The leading actresses is good, the locations looks nice and there’s an effective mythology around the witch and the surrounding legends.
At times, and I’m completely serious, it’s actually quite creepy. I like the idea of what’s following them, it’s handled very good. We don’t see so much of it, but we can still clearly figure what the hell it is. There’s also a couple of lovely shots where this thing is visible in night shots, but no one is reacting to them. You will just see them if you look carefully.
But sure, there’s a few instances of pure stupidity. For example how the thing chasing one of the girl can miss her when she’s two meters away, on the floor in a house, filming it with her camera switched to night vision - which means there’s a light coming from it, clearly visible like a flashlight directly on the target! But directly afterwards the movie is saved by a clever idea which I always wanted to see, leading up the ambiguous ending.
Raw: Der Fluch der Grete Müller was a very nice surprise, a lot better than I ever could imagine.
"I could say it was because I’ve seen too many found footage films and grown tired of the genre - but I’m not."
I´m glad you haven´t grown tired of the genre, you found some very interesting ones over the years.
"But directly afterwards the movie is saved by a clever idea which I always wanted to see, leading up the ambiguous ending."
I wonder what that could be...?
Good review, looks better than Cloud Atlas (2012), Blue Valentine (2010) and Lincoln (2012), thanks Fred, I haven´t seen it.
Posted by: Megatron | November 12, 2014 at 23:39