In a Violent Nature, 2024.
Directed by Chris Nash.
Starring Ry Barrett, Cameron Love, Andrea Pavlovic, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, and Lauren Taylor.
SYNOPSIS:
After the locket that keeps him buried in the ground is removed from its sacred place, resurrected corpse Johnny goes for a walk in the woods…
Every so often a movie comes along that claims to re-invent or deconstruct an established genre, usually by questioning the tropes and motifs that said genre exhibits across numerous movies. Scream did it – for better or for worse – for the slasher genre back in 1996, and ever since then if you are going to release a slasher movie it would need an angle or a twist that hasn’t been done before.
Or a gimmick, as some would (cynically) call it, and the trouble with gimmicks is that when you have done it once then you can’t really do it again to the same degree – just look at the Scream franchise – and so we end up with some interesting one-offs, such as Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which took what we knew about Friday the 13th, Halloween et al. and asked ‘what if they were real?’. An intriguing spin, to be sure, but once you know how it plays out is there any real credibility in doing it again?
Now we have In a Violent Nature which, if you really wanted to be cynical about it, is like watching somebody play the Friday the 13th video game, but there is a little more to it than that.
The movie opens with a voice-off, obviously of young people exploring the woods, and a hand taking a necklace that is randomly hanging on a piece of wood. This the cue for Johnny (Ry Barrett) to rise from his grave and begin to search for who took the necklace, as it belonged to his mother and was hung at the site of his death to keep him in the ground.
So far, so very standard slasher movie, but now we begin our deconstruction as the camera follows Johnny, just behind him as if he were being controlled in a video game, as he wanders through the woods looking for his mother’s necklace. After an incident at a farmhouse, Johnny finds his way to the camp where the voices from earlier are staying, and we get Johnny’s full backstory thanks to one of the gang of young adults telling the fireside legend.
And so begins the stalking proper, with no other plot points, character arcs or twists inserted, Everything else is stripped away and we are left with the bare bones of a slasher movie as Johnny finds his victims and we get some gratuitously gruesome kills. One in particular stands out for being totally bonkers and the sort of thing you would see in a Hatchet movie, done here with methodical precision and in extreme close-up, and will surely make In a Violent Nature more notable just for that.
Elsewhere, Johnny just walks and walks, and walks, but it isn’t ever boring as long as you buy into the idea that writer/director Chris Nash is silently tackling the often-criticised slasher movie trope of how these shambling, shuffling killers catch up with their prey so easily. Occasionally, the camera locks down and we can see what Johnny, or the character he is following, is doing in the distance, giving us a chance to build our expectations before the movie possibly – or sometimes not- doing something totally unexpected. Yes, we are essentially watching a lumbering hulk of a man wander around the woods, but when he gets to where he needs to be In a Violent Nature delivers.
Where it doesn’t quite deliver, however, is that it runs out of steam about 15 minutes before the credits roll. The kills that were coming quicker and in more inventive ways, as if they were building to a huge finale, drop off and the movie meanders to a downbeat and vague ending that the audience is clearly supposed to draw their own conclusions with, which feels like a cop out.
Nevertheless, for the most part In a Violent Nature will satisfy those audiences wanting carnage, but also something a little different from a straightforward slasher movie. Johnny himself looks the part, a bit like Kane Hodder-era Jason Voorhees without the mask, and the way he moves and uses the weapons at his disposal is totally enthralling. As previously stated, now this movie has been made the way it has then a sequel would only dampen its effect, although to see something in a similar vein with a more exciting and explosive ending could validate it.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
