“An ambient horror slasher that methodically depicts the enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness.”
Director: Chris Nash
Writer: Chris Nash
Starring: 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
Release Date: May 31, 2024
IMDB
There is a lot of buzz around In A Violent Nature (2024). It would appear that director and writer Chris Nash has created something revolutionary within the horror genre. All the chatter around this Jason Vorhees, Friday The 13th, inspired slasher is positive. Overwhelmingly positive.
Nash is not playing it safe in his first major motion picture. In A Violent Nature centers around an undead serial killer Johnny (Ry Barrett) as he stalks unsuspecting victims in the woods. A group of teens take a locket from some ashy debris in the woods, and that’s a bad move. These unsuspecting wanderers have unknowingly resurrected Johnny, a vengeful, immortal zombie-man fueled by 60-year-old crime. Johnny wants that locket back, and he will methodically vanquish all who come into his path.
When you watch the new trailer that came out last week, the visual aesthetic that Nash is going for is unmistakable. We don’t see Johnny. We don’t see his face. We don’t see the horror. We have the outline, the walk and the grasping of dangerous weapons, but we never actually see what Johnny looks like. Putting the audience in the POV of the killer in this documentary way is so simple that it may be genius.
There are many horror movies that are legendary because you never or rarely see the killer. Sometimes it’s a happy accident like Jaws (1975), but often it’s purposeful withholding like Alien (1979), The Descent (2005) or The Blair Witch Project (1999). Can you imagine if there was a movie made from the POV of the witches in the Blair Witch Project? Them building the Cairns and sending the unsuspecting hikers into mental hell would be fascinating to watch.
In A Violent Nature is going to need to rely a lot on its visual story telling. It’ll be curious to see how many words are actually spoken in the film. One woudln’t expect Johnny to be speaking Shakespeare, and if we are spending the majority of our time with a mute murderer, how is Nash going to convey the story and the stakes?
And hope Nash likes the color green because it would appear that inbetween the kills, there are going to be a lot of long-take sequences of Johnny walking thorugh the woods waiting for the next opportunity to raise his weapon of choice. He doesn’t have super speed or teleportation. If Nash can write a low word count screenplay that dispells convience then everyone should clap the director/writer on the back.
In an article with Entertainment Weekly, Nash cites all the Friday The 13ths, The Burning (1981) and My Bloody Valentine (1981) as massive inspirations for what In A Violent Nature Is. Nash doesn’t shy away from the fact that his new movie will dance along many of the same tropes that the slasher genere has etched into viewer’s minds. There is a reason why the genre lives on and that’s because the formula works. What Nash is doing is spinning around the variables so the normal PEMDAS order of operations is standing on its head.
We also have to love a pun in the title. The Nature in the film’s title isn’t just about the mood of the murderer. It’s also the setting for where some truly horrific and violent kills will take place. Very clever Nash, very clever.
In A Violent Nature premieres on May 31, 2024.
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