Funereal PlotsHorror
Cinema reviewsMatthew
M. Bartlett
In a Violent Nature
Director – Chris Nash
Writer – Chris Nash
In this time of streaming on demand and social media, I often encounter others’ reactions to a new movie before almost anything else, including poster art and trailers. And what I saw regarding In a Violent Nature were comparisons to truly divisive films in which, people complain, nothing happens. Skinamarink is one. The Outwaters is another. The complaint seemed to be that the camera spent too much time lingering behind the mute, hulking assailant as he walked through the woods.
I started the movie with some anticipation. I like when movies try for something different. I admired Skinamarink but did not love it, and that may be the fault of my television’s settings. I couldn’t see a damned thing. The Outwaters I turned off in frustration, but voices from the wilderness of social media are trying to convince me to give it another go.
What I found is that In a Violent Nature is an above average slasher, nothing less, maybe a good amount more. It’s certainly not a movie in which “nothing happens”—very far from it. The camera does indeed stay with the killer (Ry Barrett)—stalking behind him—more so than it does the victims and, frankly, that’s a blessing. Because the victims are pretty much the standard set of ciphers without much to mark them, with the usual banal dialogue (and sketchy “acting”) but with references to Cancel Culture thrown in to mark this as a 2020s affair.
The motivation and origin story of the killer (named Johnny) involve a necklace and locket found by some campers in a fire tower—when the campers take it, the killer digs out from his burial spot to pursue those who took it. It belonged to his mother, and somehow magically kept him inert and buried. There’s some further perfunctory campfire backstory about how the killer, when he was a boy, was slow, and was lured to his death by a group of loggers, all of whom ended up mysteriously massacred.
At some point our mute, implacable, unkillable killer acquires a pair of dragging hooks and a smoke helmet (suitably creepy—I wouldn’t be surprised to see a rubber version appear at Spirit of Halloween this year) before he carries on his rampage. The murders range from mundane to astoundingly over the top (and, it seems to me, physically and physiologically impossible, even given superhuman strength). The gore flows. The camera lingers, matter-of-factly, documentary-style, yet still artful.
Where In a Violent Nature surpasses its forebears is in its deliberately moderate pace, its quiet, unobtrusive, but compelling direction, and its refreshing lack of music. Besides the dialogue, we hear birdsong, wind, the heavy footsteps of Johnny as he approaches his prey.
There are also several scenes of edge-of-your-seat suspense, as when the killer enters a lake as two campers cavort and flirt at the opposite shore. The time it takes him to emerge is a singularly nail-biting sequence. If it calls to mind Gus Van Sant’s chilling Elephant, that’s not happenstance.
And the final scene, in which a lone survivor—the much remarked upon “final girl” of the subgenre—is picked up by a local and driven toward a hospital, is in itself incredibly suspenseful. Is the driver to be trusted? Is she in on it? When she stops to apply a tourniquet to our survivor’s leg, our final girl panics, begging to be taken out of the forest and to the hospital. The driver urges patience. The camera lingers on the woods as the viewer, feeling the fear, searches the screen.
