Released: 31 May 2024
Director: Chris Nash
Distributor: IFC Films
Budget: $3 million
Stars: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, and Reece Presley
The Plot:
When some friends nonchalantly take a locket from the remains of a fire tower, the ranged Johnny (Barrett) resurrects and begins a slow and violent search for it.
The Background:
John Carpenter’s Halloween (Carpenter, 1978) wasn’t the first “slasher” but it absolutely popularised this horror sub-genre and laid the foundation for a slew of copycats, with perhaps none more influential than the Friday the 13th franchise (Various, 1980 to present). These films cemented many horror tropes, such as the hulking, masked, mute killer and the events taking place in dense woodland, and proved incredibly popular arguably because they repeatedly returned to these clichés. After decades of these movies, and others, even the most ardent fans would agree that the formula became stale. Writer/director Chris Nash sought to address this with a low-budget throwback that sought to return to the slower, more methodical roots of the slasher genre and simultaneously subvert it by framing the events from the killer’s perspective and as though the film were a nature documentary. Premiering at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, In a Violent Nature received a limited cinema release and eventually made $4.5 million at the box office. The film was received very positively, with reviews praising the imaginative spin on the slasher genre and arthouse approach, while also criticising its more predictable elements. Still, many ranked it as the best horror film of 2024 and a sequel was announced at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con.
The Review:
Unlike any horror movie or slasher film I’ve ever seen, In a Violent Nature follows the killer for most of its runtime or framing shots from his perspective. This unique approach is immediately evident as the camera starts focused on the locket and the scorched fire tower where Johnny’s body is buried rather than on the kids who take his property, and the film rarely deviates from this perspective. Fundamentally, In a Violent Nature like a Friday the 13th slasher, specifically Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (McLoughlin, 1986) and Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009), primarily by depicting Johnny as a slow, lumbering, dishevelled, reanimated corpse who trudges through the woods and brutalises his victims. Like Crystal Lake, the Ontario wilderness is effectively haunted by Johnny’s legend, which is told to his unsuspecting victims and the audience (over a campfire, no less) by Ehren (Sam Roulston). “Slow” Johnny was the son of a shopkeeper in a nearby logging community who was regularly targeted by the loggers, who felt slighted by his father’s extortionate prices. One day, they lured him up a fire tower and accidentally caused him to fall to his death. His father then died in a barroom brawl after seeking revenge and Johnny’s restless spirit has been blamed for subsequent murders ever since, with the only things keeping him at bay being his mother’s locket and the grounds of the old fire tower. Of course, Kris (Pavlovic), Colt (Love), and the others laugh this off as a simple ghost story but, for the locals, it’s all-too- true and they’re very guarded about keeping Johnny subdued and hidden away.
Once he awakens, Johnny begins his search and wanders seemingly aimlessly through the thick, oppressive woods and wilderness. Mute and acting purely on instinct and rage, he plods incessantly through brambles and thickets, shrugging past all obstacles and rarely being distracted. However, it seems he has no true idea of where the culprits are and is acting purely on instinct. He’s driven to head towards the nearest sounds, slaughtering a local and clutching desperately at anything that remotely resembles his lost locket, experiencing memories of his father and his past in the process. Although we follow close behind him, the other characters are not so attentive and Johnny easily slips past them, stalks them, and enters their property, largely because no one expects an undead killer to be wandering the woods and they’re usually distracted by petty disagreements or dope. Vague memories seemingly drive Johnny to seek out the local ranger station, where he acquires an old firefighter mask to hide his gruesome visage, an axe, and a particularly ghastly set of dragging hooks to skewer and mangle his victims. Unlike Jason Voorhees (Various), who exhibited various supernatural abilities thanks to sloppy editing, we always see exactly where Johnny’s going, how he gets there, and what he does with his victims. He tends to drag their bodies away or casually dispose of them and is as captivated by various woodcutting implements as he is by key chains, showcasing a child’s mindset alongside his seething bloodlust. Never moving faster than a brisk stride, Johnny nevertheless exhibits superhuman strength and endurance, easily shrugging off gun shots, breaking bones, and nailing his victims with pinpoint accuracy. Johnny searches each victim for the locket and moves on to the next when he comes up short, though we’re later told by a local ranger (Presley) that simply returning the locket isn’t enough to stop Johnny’s rampage and he instead needs to be subdued and buried under the fire tower, a seemingly impossible feat.
Although we end up with a “Final Girl” in Kris, we don’t learn too much about her or her friends except that they’re comfortable enough to banter about their dicks, tease each other about their lusts, and that there’s some sexual tension here and there. Ehren is the first to die when he goes for a smoke (or a shit, or to go try his luck with some gas station girls) but, beyond his foreknowledge of Johnny’s legend, we mainly learn that he’s potentially horny. Similarly, Aurora (Creaghan) initially stands out since she’s desperate to get a signal and enjoys a good selfie, but she gains a touch more characterisation when she flirts with Brodie (Lea Rose Sebastianis) and practises yoga. Brodie’s “thing” is swimming in the nearby lake (which is naturally a fatal pastime) and flirting with Aurora, while Colt and Troy (Leone) spend most of their time bickering. It’s a little hard to tell and the characters are difficult to distinguish since we mainly hear their conversations offscreen and only get a glimpse of their lives through Johnny’s peripheral senses. By the time the survivors realise their friends are dead, there’s little to no emotional connection to their plight. Colt and Kris plan to lure Johnny into an ambush, one assumed to involve setting him ablaze, but there’s little reason to be invested since we barely know them and Johnny offs them so brutally. In a Violent Nature thus takes the notion of cheering the killer over the hapless victims to the nth level, devoting basically it’s entire runtime to this enraged zombie’s pursuit and making us invest our time and energy into him and his quest rather than his victims. Thus, his victims are depicted similar to how slasher killers are seen in classic horror: on the periphery, with little insight into the character or motivations. It’s an interesting contrast and one that lands fairly well until the finale, where we’re robbed of a climactic showdown and the film is left to fizzle out as we suddenly shift to following the traumatised and wounded Kris as she’s rescued by a passing motorist (Lauren-Marie Taylor).
The Nitty-Gritty:
In a Violent Nature is a very methodical film. Since we’re following Johnny most of the time, the film has a very slow and deliberate pace. Normally, slasher killers stride through the environment to build dramatic tension or magically appear for a jump scare. It’s rare that these films show us what the killer is up to between these moments, but In a Violent Nature depicts it in painstaking detail. Johnny walks. A lot. From the moment he digs himself from his grave, he walks and barely stops except to watch his victims, choose a weapon, or distract himself with a toy. He walks, and walks, and walks some more, covering vast distances with a determined stride, all to ambient noise. There is no soundtrack, no sudden strings or memorable score. There’s a touch of digetic music but otherwise we’re left with the sounds of crickets, Johnny’s heavy footsteps, and general woodland noises. It’s creepy and gritty and grounded in a way most horror audiences probably aren’t used to provides a stark, naked isolation to the events. However, it does get somewhat tedious after a while. Occasionally, jump cuts advance Johnny’s progress across or change day to night, a technique I feel could’ve been employed more to cut down the repetition. After a while of following Johnny, I think we get the point and the over-the-shoulder perspective wears out its welcome, especially as I feel the filmmakers missed the opportunity to do more with Johnny in these moments. Like, maybe he grows dormant and shuts down at times, or maybe he has more memories unlocked during his jaunt, or we could see him stalking his victims more elaborately. Just…something to break things up a bit.
Like any decent slasher, In a Violent Nature features a fair few kills ranging from brutally creative to sadly disappointing. Johnny’s first kill is offscreen; all we’re shown is his hand slowly reaching for his victim’s face before it cuts to that same hand dripping in blood, the local’s cap drenched in blood splatter. I didn’t mind this as it’s very creepy to imagine what Johnny did to the guy’s face, but I also think the film would’ve been better served by showing us the true, gory end this guy met if only to counterbalance the slower, more methodical moments. Similarly, Brodie is simply offed by Johnny grabbing her when she’s swimming. We see this entirely from an outsider’s perspective, meaning she disappears into the lake with a yelp, surfaces once, and then floats to the surface, dead. It’s a stark and sudden affair somewhat at odds with the film’s main hook, which is following Johnny’s every action. Compare it to Ehren’s death, where we follow Johnny as he arms himself with a drawknife, stalks him in the dark, and comes up behind him when he’s smoking by a tree. The resultant face-splitting death is made more gruesome by Ehren’s struggles and the sickening depiction of his severed head, and by Johnny dragging his body around and using it to smash his way to his mask and hooks. Johnny uses his hooks for a shocking and delightful kill when he surprises Aurora, shoves his fist through her stomach, and yanks her head through the hole! When he attacks Troy and Trevor, he makes a mockery of their attempt to limp to safety with his precision axe throwing and then delivers a spectacular head smash with a rock. Although the ranger seemingly offers Kris and Colt hope, his past experiences with Johnny mean nothing when he’s easily disarmed and paralysed. Johnny then systematically drags the ranger into a nearby cabin, demonstrates the cutting power of a log splitter, and then severs his would-be-nemesis’s arm (a disappointingly weak effect since it’s obviously a fake limb). He then hauls the ranger’s body into the log splitter’s path to cut his head off, which was a bit disappointing as I was hoping the guy would be split crotch to head and the ranger was paralysed so he’s not even screaming, making for a surprisingly weak kills despite its elaborate nature.
Johnny’s search for his stolen locket takes him all over the wilderness. He kills anyone in his way and searches for it each time, only to come up short and move on to the next victim, with the locket eventually making its way around Kris’s neck. We never see this, but the ranger reacts with anger when he spots it when she and Colt go for help upon discovering their friends’ dead bodies and narrowly escaping Johnny’s wrath. The ranger offers a bit more exposition about Johnny and his previous encounter with him but, thanks to Colt being so useless he can’t even chain the temporarily subdued killer’s limbs, the ranger’s left at Johnny’s mercy. After dispatching his foe, Johnny pursues the last two survivors into the dark woods where we hear Kris and Colt whimpering and whispering, desperately trying to come up with a plan. Colt’s plan to distract Johnny so Kris can set up a trap ends horrifically badly when the lad gets his head caved in with an axe. Witnessing Johnny repeatedly bludgeon her lover’s head leaves Kris in a traumatised stupor and she abandons the plan, leaving the locket behind and slipping away. She’s then picked up by a passing motorist and left little more than a vegetable as her saviour bizarrely details her brother’s encounter with a bear in an attempt to calm Kris’s nerves. Injured from her experience, Kris flies into a panic when the driver stops to tend to her wound, anxiously expecting Johnny to burst from the woods. However, in a subversion of the usual jump scare that punctuates such slasher films, this doesn’t happen. Instead, we get one last slow camera shot showing that the locket is gone, presumably retrieved by Johnny, though his fate is left ambiguous. This was such a surreal deconstruction of the slasher’s usual climactic and bloody ending. Instead of a dramatic showdown with the killer, we get a prolonged anecdote about a bear that I guess is supposed to be an allegory for trauma but instead grinds the film to a halt and ends In a Violent Nature on a perplexingly limp note.
The Summary:
I’d seen a lot of hype surrounding In a Violent Nature. Trailers, reviews, and social media posts lauded the film as a brilliant deconstruction of the slasher genre, a unique twist on a tried-and-tested formula that changed how these films are presented. For the most part, that is certainly true. The decision to follow the mute, hulking, zombie-like killer is an inspired one and definitely helps it to stand out against other films of its genre. The nature documentary slant is an intriguing decision and it’s interesting following Johnny as he wanders about, easily slipping past unsuspecting victims and brutalising them with little effort. Unfortunately, the film can be a bit of a slog. Not only is the setting uninspired (the masked killer in the woods has been done to death) but the lack of visual variety may put some horror fans and casual audiences off. It’s fine to show the ludicrousness of these killers just walking everywhere but I would’ve liked to see more insight into Johnny, maybe show him setting traps or doing something more interesting with his victims’ bodies than hauling them around. Similarly, while no one watches these films for the protagonists, In a Violent Nature definitely suffers from not allowing us to emotionally connect with Johnny’s victims. It’s hard to care when he kills them and, indeed, the film seems to suggest that we shouldn’t since it’s turning the tables and painting the victims as unknowable, even evil forces (they did steal from Johnny, after all). If these slower moments had been bolstered by some truly memorable, outrageous, and gruesome kills then I think the pacing would’ve benefitted. Instead, we get a couple of decent kills but that’s all. Johnny has an instantly iconic look, a suitably tragic and relatable backstory, and suitable motivation for his kills but any goodwill is swept away for an overly subversive ending that causes the film to fall flat on its face. I get what In a Violent Nature was going for in subverting expectations and putting a new spin on a clichéd genre and, for the most part, it works but I can see the movie being a hard sell for more casual horror viewers. Hell, even long-time horror fans like myself may find it a bittersweet pill to swallow since it denies a lot of the tried-and true elements of the genre in favour of trying to be cute and artsy with it, resulting in an entertaining but polarising final product.
My Rating:
Pretty Good
Have you ever seen In a Violent Nature? Did you enjoy the unique perspective on the genre or did all the walking and slow pacing put you off? What did you think to Johnny, his look and backstory? Were you disappoint by the lack of characterisation given to his victims? Which kill was your favourite and would you like to see more from this world? Which slasher film is your favourite? Whatever you think about In a Violent Nature, leave your thoughts below and go check out my other horror content across the site!
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