Scenes in cannibal horror ‘Raw’ clearly proved too much for some viewers, with members of the audience watching it at the Toronto International Film Festival yesterday passing out.

Paramedics were called to the early screening of the film on Tuesday morning.

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“An ambulance had to be called to the scene as the film became too much for a couple patrons,” said Ryan Werner, who is handling the film’s marketing.

That said, the film premiered in Cannes earlier this year without incident, though one review of the movie did warn viewers to ready the ‘barf bag’.

Werner, meanwhile, added that he’d only previously seen audience reaction like it at screenings of Lars Von Trier’s controversial ‘Antichrist’.

The film tells the story of a strict vegetarian college student Justine, who descends into flesh-eating after she finds a piece of sausage buried in mash served to her at the canteen.

Things ratchet up to a considerably more gory conclusion.

Variety hailed the movie’s effects as ‘often so realistic that they are hard to look at’.

“Scenes that viewers of a sensitive nature may find disturbing see lacerated extremities, bite marks and gaping wounds perfectly walk the line between the visceral fun of practical effects and overt attention-grabbing,” it went on.

Written and directed by French helmswoman Julia Ducournau, such controversy can only be beneficial to the movie, which also won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, previous winners including the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson, Pedro Almodóvar and Terrence Malick.

Many movies have had audience members rummaging for the smelling salts, all the way back to Bela Lugosi’s ‘Dracula’ in 1931, ‘The Exorcist’ in 1973, and more recently movies like ‘Saw III’, ‘Hostel’ and 2009 body-shock horror ‘Grace.

Image credit: Petit Film