In A Violent Nature (2024)

In A Violent Nature (2024)
Directed by: Chris Nash
Written by: Chris Nash
Starring: Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Ry Barrett

IN A VIOLENT NATURE
Directed by Chris Nash

Imagine Friday the 13th from Jason’s perspective, and you got this one – a slasher film that’s literally about the slasher. Across 90 minutes, we see them coming back from the dead, lumbering around the woods, stalking their victims and generally wreaking havoc. It’s an excellent idea and one I’m surprised hasn’t been done before – maybe the closest I can think of is Behind The Mask. Yet where that actively spoofed the subgenre’s heyday, Chris Nash’s debut, In A Violent Nature, replicates it with a straight face.

The plot pretty much what you’d expect. Johnny was a mentally disabled son of a logger who was tragically killed in a prank gone wrong some seventy years ago. However, since then, he’s occasionally come back and taken his revenge by killing anyone who has dared enter the forest – emerging from the ground when someone steals a gold locket bestowed to him by his long-deceased parents. Now, a new gang of kids has pinched it and taken out a nearby cabin for the usual drink, drugs, skinny dipping, and premarital sex. So along comes Johnny with the usual array of farming equipment to get his most treasured procession back. It’s not the most innovative story – but for what’s essentially a perspective piece for a vengeful boogeyman, nor should it be.

I was really impressed with how confidently Nash builds up a lot of its lore and conventions on the move: explaining Johnny’s mask, having the kids tell a campfire story about him, introducing a silly mechanic that can kill him, and even chucking in an arch-nemesis aka an Ahab. Ignore a few contemporary references, such as people flashing their phones; you could believe this was from a bygone age of cinema. It’s perhaps easy to dismiss the characterisation, with the victims being your usual array of entitled brats and other teen archetypes – indeed, I’ve seen some snobbier critics than I do exactly this. However, this criticism ultimately misses the movie’s fidelity to its source material – it’s a whole new way for people to experience these sorts of slashers. Moreover, because we’re so used to seeing these characters disembowelled, our complicity becomes more palatable.

Because make no mistake, as the camera follows Johnny around like a character in a videogame, we are very much implicated in his quest and trapped with him as much as his victims are. This aspect may be a little divisive – Johnny doesn’t have a significant arc, and we watch him watch people for over half the running time. Still, the cinematography is spectacular, the atmosphere is amazing and the payoffs are worth it: one in particular is bound to go down as an all-time classic – you’ll know it when you see it through your fingers. We also get some great use of dramatic irony, like when he wanders into the lake as we see a camper kick off her clothes and go for a swim, and we wait and wait and wait for him to get her. Some may find it boring, but I thought it was immersive, unique and a bloody good time. The gang is mainly characterised through bits of overheard dialogue or sneaky peaks between trees – though the campers who figure out they’re being hunted get a bit more to do, and by the end, audience loyalties will be tested.

Without going into specifics, I suspect the third act may prove a particularly divisive bit of an already divisive film. For me it works – Nash has done enough to build the tension that the very intentional slowdown gives a sense of impending dread rather than seeming anticlimactic – you’ll find yourself wanting to shout at the screen. In some ways it’s the dramatic highlight of an already excellent piece. Attempts to develop the themes beyond the audience’s love of killers are too little too late (are monsters born or made?). Still, the starker mood is a wonderful way of reminding us that as much as these films are entertainment, they put their characters through the wringer. It elevates what would otherwise be a fun thought experiment and widens the scope for the inevitable sequel.

Rating: