‘In a Violent Nature’ Takes Us on a Slasher-Guided Walk in the Woods
★★★
Calming. Serene. These aren’t words you would normally use to describe a movie that includes a scene where a person is spliced in half by an industrial log splitter, but there is a strange, peaceful elegance in watching a killer lumber around the woods in Chris Nash’s unconventional slasher, “In a Violent Nature.”
A slasher movie told (mostly) from the killer’s POV, “In a Violent Nature” follows Johnny (Ry Barrett), the undead killer who rises from his grave and picks off campers one-by-one in order to reclaim the important trinket that was taken from his grave. (Fun fact: it has been released on Friday, May 31st, which is either serendipity at play or an intentional wink-wink nudge-nudge towards the“Friday the 13th” franchise, the formula of which Nash is inversing here. As I type this, I’ve yet to see this lil’ factoid mentioned anywhere, so apologies if you’ve read it 13 times by now.)
Plot-wise, there isn’t much to discuss. At least a third of the movie is watching Johnny from behind as he trudges slowly through the woods. Your mileage may vary. The film is an exercise in patience, that’s for sure; it can be monotonous for some, others may call it “boring,” “like watching paint dry” even, but those in for the ride will recognize the tediousness of these scenes reflect the tragic aimlessness of Johnny’s existence. Because of the picturesque quality of the cinematography (which, rendered in the Academy ratio, can be surprisingly beautiful at times) and the fact that there is little to no score (the theoretical soundtrack album would be a glorified Nature CD: birds chirping, leaves rustling and blood curdling screams of agony), “In a Violent Nature” can be a morbidly pleasant experience, like a gentle stroll through nature that often leads to death. Viewers who embrace it, or trudge through the monotony, are rewarded (punished?) with graphic violence. (There is one kill in the film that could make Art the Clown blush and let me tell you, the audience loved every second of it!)
Of course, the whole film doesn’t follow the killer. Nash occasionally (and often briefly) switches the perspective, allowing the audience to spend a little time with the victims before Johnny offs them in a rather spectacular fashion. But even in the majority of these scenes, the focus is not on the characters themselves. We see ’em but our vision of them is blurry, we hear ’em but their voices are irrelevant, and the focus is almost always on the atmosphere, the environment, on Johnny lurking in the background somewhere. I respect the honesty in this approach. The characters here are chopped liver; on the sidelines, they are living out the quintessential ’80s slasher flick the audience already knows beat-by-beat. We don’t need to see their perspective to know what’s happening from their point of view. Nash recognizes this and wastes just enough sweat for the audience to care about one character; and when he does shines the spotlight on her later in the film and allows the audience to really see her and hear her, the resulting effect hits hard, as if all that fear, dread and emotional turmoil that would normally be present in the traditional slasher film the audience isn’t seeing, has been building up like an elusive specter in the background and comes crashing down all at once like a boulder being smashed against a cranium.
Somehow I doubt we will ever see Johnny again. Unless Nash switches the formula completely or takes the character to a different environment altogether (like Manhattan? That hasn’t been done in a horror sequel, right?), I see things getting real boring, real quick. I don’t think the audience would have any patience left over for another go-around anyway, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “In a Violent Nature” is an open-shut, textbook example of a one-off; the type of film that can work once, and only once. Not every good movie deserves a sequel and this, my friends, is a feature, not a defect. As a great idea in a business that likes to milk great ideas over and over and over again until sooner or later they become bad ideas, “In a Violent Nature” can stand apart as a singular force, memorable, unique, something the audience will remember, an experience that isn’t disposable, the kind of special event theaters were made for.
