In a Violent Nature (2024)

Watched 6/2/24 (theater)

Chris Nash’s Canadian anti-thriller accomplishes its modest mission, giving us the shaken-up serial-slasher-as-main-character movie we’ve never really gotten before. It’s a movie that ebbs and flows patiently, a bit too patiently, but mostly justifies itself on novel, graphic kills just when it threatens to become full-on boring. Unfortunately, the stately pace also forces a few overly-cute camera choices to stand out for the worse, but In a Violent Nature still offers traction if you get mileage out of dumb teens in the woods meeting gory ends, which according to the box office these days is one of the few things that still pulls eventual profit.

The concept concerns a quietly-resurrected murderer/avenger, creatively named Johnny. Johnny is the dirty, somehow more grungy amalgam of Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and Michael Myers, donning a Bioshock-inspired mask and a set of weapons so cinematically disturbing, it makes other movies solely predicated on violence, like The Purge or The Strangers, seem tame in comparison.

When Johnny isn’t mindlessly killing, we follow him with long, uncomfortable tracking shots and serene nature still shots that a serial murderer just happens to tromp through. Shot in the Canadian wilderness, In a Violent Nature does offer tree huggers a beautiful documentary of sorts on how brutal this beauty can be, so it has that going for it. Until the end, the camera almost exclusively tracks the bad guy, and that’s how the movie makes its case for ingenuity. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it does commit respectably.

Now, that ingenuity also comes with the obvious problems of following a silent assassin. It can only be so dynamic; and the film never reinvents itself enough to overcome that narrative slack. It tries to offer a bonfire get-to-know-you scene focusing on the main group of teenagers on a weekend getaway; but distracting camera tricks and a lack of creative dialogue rob that scene of its welcome subversion of the rest of the movie. The last 20 minutes, as well, offer another departure from Johnny that, without spoiling anything, ultimately get repetitive without ever paying off anything they set up.

But the kills are the reason for horror aficionados to see this. Yes, the concept is something you haven’t seen cooked up before in this way, but the massacre that unfolds will make even the most strong-willed audience members squirm. Rarely does so much practical blood and gore squirt, squelch, and erupt in a major motion picture the way it does here. It’s all in pretty bad taste, but the movie executed these with convincing-enough effects that it feels earned and is good for a few nervous, shock-driven laughs that are much needed in a script often lacking entertainment value.

The aforementioned teen prey of Johnny are a group of five or six actors, all credible in their very small roles, going down in a pretty random order with of course no emotional stakes because we spend most of our time with the villain. When the teens do go, yes, it’s stimulating on some sick level. But we never get the extended silliness and irresponsibility of the babysitters in Halloween, for example. Or the stupid fun of two dumb hot people having sex in the worst possible situation as seen in the Friday the 13th movies. It’s all underplayed in service of tracking Johnny and giving the oft-underrepresented evil character his due.

Overall, In a Violent Nature makes the most of its micro budget with gnarly kills and an original concept, but also shows why this isn’t done more often. There’s only so much water to squeeze from its mostly dry sponge. Without characters to glob on to, and without a radical-enough reimagining of pace or structure at any point during the inevitably overlong runtime/static plot, this one ends up as more of an intermittently interesting experiment than a transcendent genre classic. But will it find its cult audience and will this idea be ripped off or sequel-ized over the next few years? Almost certainly on each front.

5.5/10