Movie Review – In A Violent Nature
Principal Cast : Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver, Timothy Paul McCarthy, Lauren-Marie Taylor.
Synopsis: When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 70-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it.
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Described by the filmmakers as an “ambient slasher”, and eschewing glossy high-octane production values most modern horror films enjoy, In A Violent Nature is an intriguing twist on the popular subgenre feeling more documentary or found-footage than straight up gore-fest. I would suggest the film’s protracted long-take structure, lack of soundtrack and more ruminative tone will not be to everyone’s tastes – it certainly wasn’t for me – but between the vast stretches of relative quiet punctuated by moments of ghastly horrific violence, I have to admit substantial admiration for attempting to give something new to a kind of cinema that has often felt well-worn and… well, worn out.
Set in the Canadian wilderness, an ancient corpse is reanimated after a group of young adults accidentally nick a special locket belonging to the murdered occupant of an abandoned fire station. The hulking brute, sporting a historic firefighting mask used to combat local wildfires, stalks the woods, murdering everyone he encounters in his quest to gain possession of the locket, usually in a variety of gruesome ways, and one of which is despatched in the most hilarious over-the-top manner possible. Portraying the masked figure of doom is Ry Barrett, as Johnny, while the ersatz “innocent victims” are performed by Andrea Pavolvic, as Kris, Cameron Love, as Colt, Liam Leone as Troy, Charlotte Creaghan as Aurora, Lea Rose Sebastianis as Brodie, Alexander Oliver as Evan, and Sam Roulston as Ehren. There’s not much setup to In A Violent Nature, with the kills often highly telegraphed beforehand, while the steadi-cam nature of much of the film’s photography apes a similar feeling to that of Kubrick’s The Shining, only outdoors and without Berlioz’ memorable musical accompaniment.
Mixing the feel of an ASMR video, the carnage of a bloody modern horror slasher, and the tone of The Blair Witch Project, Chris Nash’s first full length feature as director is an enjoyably frustrating affair, driven by the fact the obviously low-budget film offers scant characterisation and plenty of languid killer-walks-through-the-woods material. The film is also absent a traditional score, something only a few horror films have managed to do successfully, and of all the aspects of In A Violent Nature I enjoyed it was the ratcheting up of the ambient and dialogue audio to give the creepy, sinister intimacy prevalent throughout a real edge. The film assumes the viewpoint of the killer, a rarity these days, and essentially makes the “heroes” of the film a bunch of nameless, gormless cannon-fodder hotties spending a weekend in the wilderness that, in all honesty, is the weakest aspect of the movie.
The problem with making the film’s monster the focal point is that without any dialogue from him, only about him, it reduces the viewer’s empathy for him. Nash’s script shoehorns in a bunch of garbled backstory through a fireside camp spook story, and plenty of what Shakespeare might call “asides” in the background dialogue we hear from time to time, giving the characters with exposition a little bit to do, and in reversing the horror trope of making one of the hot young girls the “hero” of the story absolutely none of the people in this movie seem to be worth investing in. It’s a frustrating experiment in character reversal that didn’t work for me – arguably not helped by some truly atrocious acting from the largely unknown cast of Canadian talent – but definitely achieves the set aim of making this film unique for the genre. The most egregious aspect of the film is a protracted exposition piece that concludes the film, an awkwardly performed denouement that’s one of the least effective I’ve seen for a while, mainly because it seeks to emotionally resolve the story despite doing little to earn our investment. Having said that, while I found myself tuning out by this stage, the cracking potential for a sequel is definitely going to make me interested for another instalment.
In A Violent Nature is definitely a film in which feeling is most keenly sought by the the director. The hulking figure of Ry Barrett, as the film’s killer, who is largely masked and strolling casually through the woods with almost unfettered impunity, is one that should terrify the audience; sadly, although there are a few scenes in relative darkness and the supernaturally resurrected Johnny lurks just beyond the edges of sight, for the most part the film is overlit to its detriment, ensuring that by keeping the monster in full focus most of the time, it reduces the impact of his jumpscares and kills. Highly graphic gore and body dismemberment doesn’t really affect me these days – I laughed a lot watching Terrifier 2, it was so over the top – and In A Violent Nature often can’t work out if it enjoys the sadistic body torture inflicted on several of the characters or whether its going for gross-out gags. Perhaps the most laudable of the film’s kills is a cliffside disembowelment in which Johnny literally turns one of the poor victims inside out with a fishing hook; it’s inventive, but thanks to the viewer knowing next to nothing about the character being killed it’s almost meaningless to the point of… well, what is the point?
It’s a sentiment carried throughout the film, sadly. I found the lengthy stretches of quiet and unassuming calm as our killer stalks his victims to be quite boring, really. I understand it was intended to create a sense of impending dread, but for me that aspect never really worked. I mean, I could see what Nash and his filmmaking team were trying to accomplish, and I applaud the effort, but it never connected with me. Because I wasn’t invested in the characters beyond them being a group of barely conceived young adults out on a lark, and the film’s Macguffin felt somehow too trivial for all the carnage, even at a tight 90 minutes the film felt about thirty minutes too long. In A Violent Nature is a film I can recommend for the inventiveness of its premise – even though it never gave me the necessary chills I was hoping for – but as a slasher it’s too slowly paced, too clumsy with its scripting, and absolutely awful with the performances. Knowing the actors had very little to work with, and much of their material was shot from a distance, perhaps I’m being too unkind, but salvaging much out of this protracted woodland stroll might be too tall an order for this horror fan.
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