A Walk In A Killer’s Shoes, or, The In A Violent Nature Review

What if Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, Knight of Cups) took on Friday the 13th? That conceit is the backbone of Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature, which on paper comes across as a spiritual sequel to that one Saturday Night Live sketch of Wes Anderson making a home invasion horror movie. Pairing wistfully beautiful shots of the Canadian wilderness with over-the-top violence and gore, In A Violent Nature becomes just a bit more than Mad Libs creation.

Nash’s take on a slasher story is simple: There’s a group of young adults that range from “the quiet one” to “the stoner one” all hanging out in the woods. Per slasher rules, this group runs afoul of an axe-throwing, hook-swiping spirit of vengeance, looking to reclaim what’s been stolen from his grave. Cue the dismemberments, the screaming, the running, the tripping, the fake-out deaths, and all the other things that come with any slasher movie from the last 50 years, and that’s the basic gist of Nash’s movie. 

The interesting tweak Nash brings to this age-old narrative is the perspective he tells the story from: the villain himself, Johnny (Ry Barrett). For the majority of the run-time, the audience follows the hulking beast (sometimes literally, as Nash and cinematographer Pierce Derks find a love for shooting directly behind the beast’s back as he slowly stomps from place to place) as he exacts his revenge on a group of young people who have inadvertently stolen his prized necklace. Like most classic slasher villains, Johnny never speaks. Everything the audience learns about the story is from Johnny overhearing conversations, which does start to feel like an easy out for Nash to tell Johnny and other characters’ backstories. Nevertheless, Barrett makes the most out of his character’s silence, showcasing silent power in his tank-like footsteps, and the occasional sliver of humanity with the slight tilt of the head that shows a monster recalling its tragic past.

Derks’ cinematography, which emphasizes the natural beauty that surrounds the film’s cursed spirit and his future victims, also provides a fresh spin onto the typical setting of the large and isolated forests found in numerous slasher movies. Here, the trees and brushes’ greens are just as vibrant as the victims’ red blood. Outside of the actual killing scenes (which are cut to hell and back), the bulk of the movie opts to have contemplative, long camera takes that follow Johnny as he slowly completes his quest of revenge. If you were to catch the movie at a random time while strolling through someone’s living room, you wouldn't be at fault for thinking the movie was about a bedraggled man taking a tranquil stroll through the forest. When In A Violent Nature combines these quiet and beautiful surroundings with the sight of a battered and bloodied villain, the result is funny and a bit awe-inspiring. Funny in that Nash has found a beautiful wide shot of the treeline melding with a gorgeous sunset and has placed a silly looking slasher in the middle of it all, and awe-inspiring in that the filmmaker and his production team show great skill in crafting well-composed scenes.

Sadly, the movie begins to run out of narrative and technical power as it reaches its third act. Like any Malick film, watching characters meander through beautiful places isn’t an experience that everyone will enjoy, especially if it's in the context of a slasher movie. In this film, the moments where the film plods as fast as its lumbering protagonist can start to lose a bit of its luster when it starts to feel like runtime padding. This feeling is exemplified in one moment where Johnny slowly, slowly, slowly, dismembers a poor schlub with the world’s slowest wood cutter machine. In theory, it’s a scene that should be driving tension towards its inevitable gory finish, but Nash sits the camera down for what feels like eternity, making the audience antsy to see the poor soul get dismembered already so the story can continue. 

The filmmaker also seems to tire of following Johnny as the ending grows near, shifting the point of view to the prototypical final survivor. It does change things up for the film, but this move has Nash ironically throwing his interesting take on the genre back into very familiar third-act slasher tropes. The film does become scarier and more tense as the literal perspective shifts, but the fim’s established slow pace by this point has one yearning for the film to reach its disappointingly safe ending. 

With a relative whimper of an ending, In A Violent Nature comes across a movie that has an interesting approach to a genre it admires, but lacks the full confidence to commit to its approach by the end. At the very least, Nash shows promise as a filmmaker who isn’t afraid to capture brutal eviscerations on screen, with the practical effects shining as much as the natural surroundings. Where the filmmaker can improve in future works is fully buying into his interesting ideas and seeing them through all the way to the end.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a patron of Hyperreal Film Journal for as low as $3 a month!