- Directed by: Julia Ducournau
- Written by: Julia Ducournau
- Stars: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYZaNnnK2_E
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This has a little bit of a slow start as the characters are set up, and we all endure an excessive amount of hazing. But once things get going, they get going well, and it’s a pretty fine movie with lots of gore and ick moments. We both liked it, Brian more so than Kevin.
Spoilery Synopsis
A car drives down a deserted street and then nearly crashes to avoid hitting someone in the road. Credits roll.
Justine is in the cafeteria, and she’s clearly a vegetarian. She almost gets a meatball in her dinner and her mother reacts strongly. They soon drop her off at school and leave her there.
The first night in the dorm, her room gets invaded by her roommate, Adrien, and then a bunch of men in masks, here to haze them. Dozens and dozens of new students are trotted downstairs by the screaming maniacs and made to crawl on their hands and knees to a big party.
It’s quite a big dance party, and Justine would just as soon not be there. She’s grown up very sheltered, and this is all new to her. She runs into her older sister from home, Alexia. Alex takes her to the pictures of the old sororities, and they see their mother in one of the photos and their dad.
The next day, we see the students intubate a horse. The whole crowd gets blood dumped on them. It’s pledge week, and they’re all pledges. Then they make everyone eat rabbit kidneys, but Justine insists that she’s a vegetarian. She eats it but soon vomits it right back up.
That night, in bed, Justine notices that she has a weird, itchy rash. She goes to see the nurse, who asks all kinds of sexual questions. Eventually, she says it’s probably some kind of food poisoning. She hasn’t felt right since the raw rabbit kidney.
Justine steals a burger patty from the cafeteria. She doesn’t know why. Adrien thinks that’s weird, and so does she. He takes her out for some bread and shawarma. She’s a meat-eater now, and she’s really eager about it.
She helps Adrien with a test, gets called out by the professor, and then pukes up a huge hairball. Alex and Justine get drunk and pee all over themselves. Alex then bikini waxes Justine, and that goes badly; Alex loses a finger and passes out. As she waits for an ambulance, Justine can’t find any ice to pack the finger in, so she… eats it like a chicken wing. Halfway through, Alex wakes up and sees what’s going on.
The hospital brings in their parents. They blame the dog for eating the finger and there’s nothing else to be done, so the parents soon go home. Alex and Justine walk home down an isolated road, where Alex jumps out and makes a car crash – like we saw in the opening scene. Alex opens the car door and takes a bite out of the mortally wounded man inside. It’s not just Justine.
In class, they have to dissect dogs, and Justine works with Adrien. Later she starts to notice just how tasty he looks with his shirt off. Still, he’s her roommate and gay, so she tries to ignore that.
Justine walks to the wrong place and gets doused in blue paint as another stupid hazing event. She then has to make out with a yellow painted man until they are green. She bites his lip instead. She goes home and has sex with her supposed-to-be-gay roommate, Adrien. She keeps trying to bite him, but he keeps pushing her head back. She ends up biting herself for satisfaction.
There’s another party that night, and Justine gets really, really drunk. She’s all over the men at the party until Alex pulls her into the school’s morgue. We don’t see what happens next.
The next day, Adrien shows her video footage of what happened last night. Alex made Justine bite a corpse for the camera. This results in a very bitey girlfight outside the building as everyone films with their cameras.
The horn sounds, and pledge week is finally over.
Justine wakes up next to Adrien, who turns out to be dead and half-eaten. What did she do last night? Maybe she didn’t– she finds Alex in the room holding a bloody ski pole that she used to stab him with.
Later, Justine visits Alex in prison with her parents. Her father explains that it’s not her fault or Alex’s. Their mother is very special. He opens his shirt, and he’s just covered in bite marks and scars.
“I’m sure you’ll find a solution, honey.”
Brian’s Commentary
French universities are weird. That’s the first thing I learned here. The whole hazing thing is and always has been ridiculous.
The first hour is slow getting to the point, especially all the school hazing nonsense, but once it gets going, it really amps up the ick pretty quickly.
It’s pretty awesome!
Kevin’s Commentary
I could see that first initiation incident when the upperclassmen raid the freshman rooms, dump their beds out the window, and herd them all to a part as being acceptable to all involved and the folks running the school. But I found myself growing annoyed by the hazing that kept going on to the point of bullshit and distraction. Other than that, it was a very fine movie, full of gore, good acting, and character development. Especially gore. I’d give it a strong, but not quite solid, thumbs up.