This is one of those movies for me that feels like it was tailor made to scratch an itch I’ve long had that hasn’t been satisfied by any movie up until this point. In A Violent Nature is a horror film – a slasher, to be specific – and it’s a film that is told for the most part by the villain’s perspective. Well, even that doesn’t fully describe it. It’s not necessarily the villain’s point-of-view, so much as we observe the actions of the villain as he goes about his day, including all the mundane and tedious actions that lead up to the terrible slaughter that is about to unfold.
The basic setup from writer and director Chris Nash is that we have a group of teenagers who go out camping in the wilderness of Ontario, Canada, far from any real civilization. It just so happens to be in the same place where there is a local legend of Johnny (Ry Barrett), a vengeful spirit who terrorizes locals after being victimized in a terrible crime many years ago. Well, Johnny is very much real, he has awakened, and he is out for blood. And we follow every little step that Johnny takes as these teens come into his crosshairs.
It’s a very classic slasher premise, very clearly reminiscent of Friday The 13th, almost to the point of being a straight up ripoff (there’s even an extended cameo from a Friday The 13th Part 2 alumni), but what Chris Nash does here that feels like one of the most genuinely refreshing approaches to a horror film I’ve seen in a while is taking this distant, atmospheric, and patient methodology to the filmmaking. Think “what would happen if Gus Van Sant and Terrence Malick were given a campy 80s style slasher script?” Lots of quiet walking basically. And the result is truly a wild and tense and fun and immersive and exhilarating experience.
Johnny doesn’t talk, relying much of his inner thoughts being portrayed purely through Barrett’s body language and the deliberate framing from cinematographer Pierce Derks. What you do quickly realize is that Johnny is ultimately after a necklace that belonged to his mother, which hanging over his makeshift grave before one of the teens picked it up, awakening Johnny from his slumber, and out for vengeance. There are moments where you do empathize with him, despite his terrible and sadistic actions, and these moments are often quiet, somber, and reflective of a broken mind stuck in arrested development.
Given the restrained approach to the film, you’d expect the kills to reflect that, like the lake scene from Zodiac or something, but they are actually super bloody and gooey and way more in line with the campy slasher that the teenagers are in, aka the perspective that the audience would typically be in. There is one kill that is legitimately one of the finest and goriest slasher kills I think I’ve ever seen – you will know what it is when it happens. The makeup and special effects are fantastic, and it adds an element of fun to a film that otherwise presents itself as more serious business.
Does In A Violent Nature do much more than a perspective switch-up on a typical genre formula? Not really. It is a gimmick movie, but the central conceit of said gimmick, and the execution of following through on the gimmick is stellar. Outside of a sequence towards the end, the film commits very hard to the gimmick of following Johnny around as he walks the woods, and killing everyone who gets in his way, and I was really loving the experience. I was absolutely enthralled by the quiet intensity of the film, the combination of sinister vibes with surprisingly somber, emotionally driven moments that give you a ever-so-slight bit of insight into the inner-workings of our killer’s decaying mind. There’s really nothing quite like this, and that makes it all the more impressive given that it’s Chris Nash’s feature debut as a director, a very promising start for him. It’s not something I think just horror fans should see, I think any lover of cinema will find something to appreciate about this.
In A Violent Nature is now playing in select theaters.