A common filmmaking mantra is that films should “show, not tell” their story. In writer-director Chris Nash’s “In a Violent Nature” slasher horror film, the filmmaker enforces the mantra rigidly, both to the benefit and detriment of the film.
An inversion of the “Friday the 13” film, “In a Violent Nature,” is akin to a nature documentary framed through the eyes of a monstrous force of nature stalking its prey. A homage to the former, Johnny (Ry Barrett) is a killer who is resurrected from the dead and sets out on a single-minded conquest to obliterate every human that haplessly wanders into his line of sight with extreme prejudice.
Just as single-minded as his creation, Nash strips certain elements from regular slasher films and throws new ones in to stylistically differentiate his film from the latter as a more arthouse genre variant.
Most of the film, “In a Violent Nature” is filmed in the daytime, with many of the executions also taking place in broad daylight. To further evoke the sense that viewers are watching a twisted documentary, 90% of the film is shot from Johnny’s point of view.
Unlike the wide shots in regular horror films, almost every “In a Violent Nature” kill is a close-up. In this film, viewers are not watching most of the murders from a camera that is set up several meters away.
The viewers watch the kills as though they are an invisible entourage hovering over Johnny’s shoulder as he tears his victims apart.
Another stylistic directing choice Nash took that immediately stood out was Johnny’s resurrection, where Barrett is seemingly buried in real life and digs his way out, with the camera left stationary and fixed as his hulking physique pushes and unearths himself.
The practical effects further extend to Johnny’s kills, which are both gruesome and satirically funny at times. One sequence involving a girl doing yoga, in its sheer audacity and lunacy, easily enters the Slasher Kill Hall of Fame.
Nash’s use of inventive camera angles for all the kills is also a fresh take on the standard filming angles in previous slasher films.
Bodies of cons stacked on bodies of pros
Quite a few of these distinct choices stick the landing and excite arthouse horror and gore fans, but then there are the others that will test the patience of every viewer.
In between Johnny’s kills, there is a lot of walking in the film, where he slowly traipses through the film’s forest setting. For a better context, Johnny kills eight people in the film’s 90-minute runtime. That averages out to one person being murdered every 18 minutes of him just walking from point A to point B.
At times, especially later in the film, “In a Violent Nature” suffers from its self-indulgence as a slow-burn experience. A chunk of the time spent filming Johnny walking could have been used to build dread and tension. The few times Nash uses tension, it is excellent, like when he has Johnny stand near the group of characters and they fail to notice him due to the poor forest lighting and heavy foliage. Why he did not employ other camera and blocking techniques to increase tension is a mystery.
The plodding nature of “In a Violent Nature” is made slightly worse due to Johnny having no personality. His backstory as a mentally disabled boy is a terrible ableist horror trope that has been done to death and does not provide any depth to the character.
Johnny simply does not stack up to his peers like Voorhees, “A Nightmare on Elm Street’s” Freddy Krueger, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s” Leatherface, and even more recent slasher villains like “Terrifier’s” Art the Clown.
“In a Violent Nature’s” flaws are common pitfalls in these types of arthouse horror films, where directors tend to get lost in their self-satisfying pretentiousness as their intent is focused on making something high-brow and different.
There is little denying that people will either hate the film or love it, and even slasher horror purists seem split down the middle on whether they like “In a Violent Nature,” because, as it turns out, just having great kill scenes is not enough to make a great slasher film.
