In a Violent Nature (2024, dir. Chris Nash)

by Jack Martin | Jul 15, 2024

Certificate: 18

Running Time: 94 mins

UK Distributor: Altitude Films

UK Release Date: 12 July 2024

WHO’S IN IN A VIOLENT NATURE?

Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver, Timothy Paul McCarthy, Lauren Taylor

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Chris Nash (director, writer), Shannon Hanmer and Peter Kuplowsky (producers), Pierce Derks (cinematographer), Alex Jacobs (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A masked killer (Barrett) goes on a murderous rampage…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON IN A VIOLENT NATURE?

While rights issues are preventing Jason Voorhees from slashing his way back onto the big screen any time soon – who would’ve thought that would turn out to be the iconic killer’s biggest weakness this whole time? – filmmakers have been forced to get creative with their Friday the 13th-inspired slashers in the interim. One such filmmaker, former special effects artist Chris Nash, has come up with a rather ingenious angle for their directorial debut In a Violent Nature that’s also shockingly simple: what if a Friday the 13th movie wasn’t focused on any of the doomed campers, but on Jason himself?

It’s the main hook for this sombre experimental slasher, and it is honestly quite surprising that there hasn’t already been a film like this in circulation. There have certainly been a number of films like this told from the perspective of the actual killer, but rarely have they focused on a figure so driven by their murderous path that they never utter a single word of dialogue, nor have they adopted an eerily realistic tone that grounds its typical slasher roots firmly in the surrounding woodland soil. For the most part, it works here, though it is certainly not going to be to everyone’s tastes – and not just because of its unconventional formation.

The film begins when a group of teenagers – who, despite being background characters here, are all given the stock traits of slasher archetypes, such as the stoner and the inevitable final girl – take an attractive locket from an unmarked grave in the middle of the woods. Said grave happens to be the resting spot of a figure named Johnny (Ry Barrett), whose corpse suddenly rises from the ground and makes its way toward the teens in order to retrieve the locket. And, in typical slasher form, he brutally slaughters every poor soul who happens to stand in his way.

We, the audience, are almost always by Johnny’s side as he embarks on his blood-filled woodland journey, including not just when he performs some exceptionally nasty kills, but also whenever he’s slowly walking from one target to the next, not saying a word and often with his back towards the camera, and not even with a trace of musical score to further elevate the dour mood. In writing, that may sound incredibly tedious and even rather boring, especially in comparison to any other slasher that doesn’t waste as much time getting to the kills that viewers have paid to see. For that reason, I know a lot of people will be immediately put off by this film, especially those expecting to see a more straightforward slasher movie that they may have mistakenly been sold.

However, the tediousness is part of the vision that Nash, who also wrote the script, is presenting with In a Violent Nature, a vision that aims to show the structure of a typical slasher from a more studious and much quieter perspective. Those long and somewhat mundane scenes of Johnny just walking slowly through the woods, of which there are a lot, are designed to put the audience in as empty and one-track a mindset as this killer, which often provides all you need to know about his fierce and rather simple demeanour without him ever uttering a line of dialogue. Meanwhile, the near-total absence of non-diegetic music (the ambient sounds of the woods, from rustling tree leaves to distant birdsongs, make up the majority of the soundtrack in its place) further creates a contemplative and distinctively eerie atmosphere that forces the viewer to consider how a wordless and singularly focused being like Johnny might perceive these circumstances in this world, which through any other point of view would be no different than every other slasher flick out there.

It ends up feeling like the kind of slasher movie that you could actually envision happening in the real world (minus, y’know, the whole reanimated corpse thing), which makes the sudden bursts of over-the-top violence a lot more shocking. There are some utterly gruesome death scenes in this film, executed with mostly practical effects that are often impressive in how they are perceived, such as one where the transition from a live actor to the fake dummy being dismembered is pretty seamless. There’s another kill around the midway point that, to my knowledge, I don’t think I’ve ever seen be performed in any other slasher movie, not even in any of the Friday the 13th entries, with the mere logistics of it alone making it perhaps an all-time slash in this expansive horror sub-genre. Nash certainly knows what makes an effective kill within a slasher film, even in one that happens to take a very different perspective to what we’re used to seeing, but as heightened as the violence can get, the filmmaker rarely loses sight of the more atmospheric mood piece that he has originally set out to convey.

At times, In a Violent Nature doesn’t completely succeed in achieving the desired effect, particularly when it comes to its intentionally slow pacing. Whenever the focus suddenly shifts towards the more typical and far less intriguing teen characters, they are given scenes that somehow feel much more stretched out than the quieter scenes with the killer, particularly an exposition dump intended to fill the audience in on Johnny’s extended backstory. Later in the film, another character shows up to deliver a monologue that goes on for quite a substantial amount of time, to where it becomes easy to drift in and out of the scene itself, and again feels more pretentious and arthouse-like than the much more experimental hook that forms the basis for this film.

It may not be a film that everyone will get behind, but In a Violent Nature makes the most of its unique angle that, after a short while, might not have you pining for good ol’ Jason quite as much.

SO, TO SUM UP…

In a Violent Nature adopts a unique slasher perspective that creates an eerily quiet and contemplative atmosphere but doesn’t forget to indulge in typical slasher traits, like some impressively gruesome kills and stock teen characters, sometimes with mixed but still respectable results.