With In a Violent Nature, director Chris Nash takes everything we love about low-budget ’80s slashers – practically shot, extremely gory deaths; unsettling, lingering wide shots; and horrifying masks with interesting real-world histories – and completely disembowels the subgenre. Nash violently pulls out the slasher film’s heart – the undead and unstoppable killer – and puts it front and center.
The film’s homicidal force of nature, Johnny, was accidentally killed by lumberjacks in a prank gone wrong. Now he’s doomed to endlessly lumber (see what I did there?) through the Canadian wilderness, killing every youth and ranger who gets in his way. If that sounds Jason Voorhees-esque, it’s because it is: Swap the lumberjacks for negligent, horny camp counselors and keep Johnny’s mommy fixation, and you have the setup for the original Friday the 13th. But you’re not watching this movie for its plot. Where In a Violent Nature excels is its kills, which are gory as hell.
For this movie’s practical effects to really stand out, Nash and team needed to equip their killer with some iconic weapons. Johnny doesn’t disappoint: He wields a hatchet and a pair of drag hooks – tools of the men who murdered him – for some truly heinous, unpredictable kills. There’s one in particular, where Johnny uses his drag hooks on an unsuspecting victim, that reaches Mortal Kombat-fatality levels of carnage. (I dare you not to think “FINISH HER!” while watching this scene.) The best slashers use their kills not only for shock value, but also for humor, and In a Violent Nature relishes in its macabre laughs. At one point, Johnny bludgeons a victim for a comically long time – I’m talking minutes.
In a Violent Nature is a low-budget slasher, and uses its limited resources to maximum effect. Most of the film is composed of jump cuts between medium shots trailing Johnny walking through the woods, and if you’ve played the killer in an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game like Death by Daylight or Friday the 13th, you know the shot. But it’s refreshing to see Nash and cinematographer Pierce Derks add to this template by using the camera to drip-feed the audience different angles of Johnny’s disfigured appearance. The reveals of Johnny are slow and deliberately paced, but that’s a good thing because there’s not much else in In a Violent Nature that can hold the audience’s attention between kills.
Once Johnny acquires a mask – it’s inspired by 19th-century firefighting gear, but looks like a a cross between an old-timey deep sea diver’s helmet and a gas mask from World War I – Nash and Derks pivot to a more free-roaming camera that’s employed to capture kills from a variety of creative vantage points. A budget as small as In a Violent Nature’s doesn’t allow for a ton of camera setups, and Nash and Derks turn this potential constraint into a strength. The resulting shots are long, and their “can’t look away” nature is put to truly haunting effect.
Since the movie is told from the perspective of a mute, undead killer, we only hear dialogue when Johnny is within earshot of potential victims. What little conversation we get from the cannon fodder is reserved for Johnny’s backstory or snippets of the young people laughing and bickering, unaware that their time on Earth is almost up. Like the plot, none of this detracts from In a Violent Nature – but, outside of exposition, it doesn’t add anything either.
More impactful is the top-notch sound design. Nash took an odd approach to In a Violent Nature’s foley work, hiring video game foley artists because they were familiar with things like walk cycles – since Johnny does a lot of on-camera walking, that was a good call. But that’s not the only sound design that feels unique and fresh: There’s a scene in a ranger’s office where the Walkman of a victim keeps playing well after its owner is dead, the half-speed playback adding an extra layer of unnerving atmosphere. And as the number of survivors dwindles, the forest ambience grows louder and more cacophonous – making Johnny and his surroundings seem all the more dangerous.
