Craig J. Clark
It’s highly appropriate that In a Violent Nature is debuting on Shudder on a Friday the 13th, since it flips the script on those films and others of their ilk. The first feature from writer-director Chris Nash, who honed his skills on a series of shorts (including a segment of the 2014 anthology ABCs of Death 2), In a Violent Nature has been enthralling some and frustrating others since it premiered at Sundance in January. Those able to get on its wavelength have found plenty to appreciate about its fresh approach to what can sometimes seem like a moribund, played-out subgenre.
To be sure, this is far from the first film to attempt such a deconstruction. Two examples from this century are 2006’s Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and 2011’s The Cabin in the Woods, but the slasher’s popularity (and profitability) in the early ’80s inspired several parodies along with all the other bandwagon jumpers. Movies like Student Bodies (1981), and Pandemonium and Wacko (both 1982) shared marquee space with the Friday the 13th and Halloween sequels they were spoofing. And that’s not to forget Brian De Palma’s Blow Out, which opens with a merciless skewering of slasher conventions, chief among them the camera adopting the killer’s point of view, which is often soundtracked by their racing heartbeat and/or labored breathing.
One way Nash sidesteps the ingrained expectations from half a century of slashers is by not shooting anything from the POV of his unstoppable killer. This is Johnny, who is awoken from a ten-year slumber by the theft of the locket that neutralized him at the end of his previous massacre. In a typical slasher, the protagonists would be the kids who picked the wrong weekend to go camping/hiking/what-have-you, but In a Violent Nature’s protagonist is Johnny – and not just because the camera follows him wherever he goes. He also wants something and has to overcome various obstacles to get it.
In Johnny’s case, what he wants is his locket, revealed to be a family heirloom by a cleverly integrated flashback to when it was given to him by his father. (“You’ll always be our little boy, John,” the father says, and this couldn’t be more accurate in light of the man-child he grows up to become.) So what’s preventing him from achieving his goal? For starters, he doesn’t know where the locket is, although he’s certain it hasn’t gone far. (A supernatural revenant he may be, but Johnny does not have a homing beacon that leads him to it.) This is the reason why Nash spends so much time following him from place to place. Without knowing who took his most prized possession, he has to go searching for it, and is prepared to get his steps in while doing so.
The first place he tries is his former home, which is occupied by a poacher (but not for much longer). From there, he makes the rounds of the cabin where the primary group of victims is staying, the ranger station where his old nemesis works, and the surrounding environs, picking off whoever has the misfortune to cross his path. Johnny also makes a point of acquiring the vintage leather firefighter mask on display at the station along with the tools of his trade, which he puts to very creative use. In this sense, Nash’s key collaborator is Psycho Goreman director Steven Kostanksi, who, as prosthetic makeup effects lead, helps him pull off some of the most gnarly screen kills in recent memory. (There’s a reason this had to go out unrated.)
Another way Nash signals he’s after something different is by forgoing a score. In most slashers, the music alerts the audience to the killer’s presence, but since Johnny is always present, that would be redundant. Nash also leaves out nearly every dialogue scene that Johnny isn’t around to overhear (with one major exception that has proved divisive). So while Johnny eavesdrops on the scene around the fire where one camper regales the others with the story of “The White Pines Slaughter,” he misses when the presumptive final girl notices the strange figure on the periphery of the group photo they take right after. Suffice it to say, that is not the last she sees of him.
Now that In a Violent Nature has found a streaming home on Shudder, it will continue to reward those patient enough to adjust to its deliberate pace. It’s not designed to be everyone’s cup of tea, but that’s the beauty of working on this scale, which allows filmmakers to take risks and go out on a limb in search of something audiences haven’t seen before. In this, Nash succeeds. As for those who complain about how much walking there is, they have evidently never seen a Béla Tarr film. There could have been a lot more walking.
In addition to Shudder, “In a Violent Nature” is available for purchase or rental.
