In a Violent Nature
The most fascinating thing about Chris Nash’s hyperviolent slasher experiment “In a Violent Nature” is that it’s not scary. At least, not in the way that the “Friday the 13th”-esque splatter flicks he’s clearly riffing on used to be. There are no jump scares, few bouts of high-wire tension, and no ambiguity about who the final girl will be. And yet, “Violent Nature” ends up one of the most fascinating, oddly serene horror entries of the year so far, precisely because it flips the mechanics of the slasher on their head and asks you to imagine what it’d be like to be Jason Voorhees — a simple, demonically-risen man who gets up and clocks into work every day to do what he does best: disembowel.
The premise is deceptively simple: Filmed in Ontario with a patient, anthropological eye, “In a Violent Nature” spends much of its runtime with its camera focused on an implacable horror monster named “Johnny” as he goes about the business of exsanguinating whatever hapless trucker, teenager, or park ranger stands in his way. In the opening minutes, we hear hushed voices in the Canadian forest, talking about the “White Pines slaughter” and fondling a mysterious locket they’ve found under a fire tower. We don’t see them remove it, but the rumblings under the mud and leaves that follow let us know that something sacred has been disturbed. Soon, he rises and wordlessly trudges through the woods, homing in on the locket and the gaggle of horror-movie youths who’ve stolen it.
It’s a familiar structure, made decidedly unfamiliar by its inverted perspective and borderline Malickian style of filmmaking. “In a Violent Nature” spends much of its runtime feeling more like walktime; Pierce Derks’ camera (boxed in a vintage 4:3 aspect ratio) follows Johnny from behind, floating behind him in long takes like a third-person video game as he stomps steadily between the trees looking for fresh kill. These stretches are quiet, patient, and oddly calming — “Dead by Daylight” by way of A24. Only occasionally does the camera leave Johnny’s perspective, and even rarer do we see his face: melted and scarred, hands torn by torture and vengeance.
He never speaks or communicates with us or his prey: everything we learn about him is from intonation and implication. A hushed campfire story from a future victim alludes to torture and murder on behalf of the spurned members of a logging town, and a murdered boy upon which his vengeance must be wrought. (The logging and labor undercurrents of Johnny’s backstory are particularly potent; his tools of torture include a smoke mask and some particularly gnarly woodcutting tools.) A park ranger (Reece Presley) pops up later in the film to help the kids out, his dialogue implying this isn’t the first time he’s taken on this monster (a fun implication that we’re watching the later chapter of a series of movies about Johnny). It’s a clever way to disperse information, Nash forcing us to watch the normal patterns of a horror flick trickle in from the margins.
