In a Violent Nature

There is something inherently masochistic about watching a horror movie, slashers in particular, and we, as the audience, know that’s the price of admission. We will punish ourselves for 90 minutes, usually, in exchange for the thrill of adrenaline in our brains, some uneasy laughs, a few jump scares, and ultimately the catharsis of coming through the ordeal as a survivor (whether or not anyone on screen does). To get there, we get to know a group of strangers (not these) and we travel along with them on the ride. We see who they are, what they love and fear, and, if the film is any good, we come to identify with them and care about them before they are brutally and ostentatiously slaughtered for our amusement.

See? On paper it sounds crazy. In practice, it’s one of the most enduring film genres of the past fifty years. Carol Clover wrote a really great book about them, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, and I encourage you to read it if you have even a passing interest in the genre.

These movies get made because they’re often cheap to produce, there’s always a new crop of teenagers aging into the target demographic, and when one of these movies hits it big, the return on investment can be astronomical (not to mention the possibility of creating an enduring and lucrative piece of intellectual property). And while so, so, many of them are awful and forgettable and disposable, occasionally one will take some big swings, pun intended, and revitalize the genre with a fresh and exciting perspective.

In a Violent Nature is not one of those films.

Written and directed by first-timer Chris Nash, who has an extensive background in special effects for horror movies, In a Violent Nature is a disappointing take on the genre that swings big but misses in just as big a way. The film takes the familiar story of an unkillable revenge monster hunting unsuspecting attractive people in the forest, and it turns the camera around. Instead of following the young people on their forest holiday, we’re put into the perspective of a plodding, flannel-clad beast who rises from the forest floor and sets out to just kill every person it encounters. And when I say “perspective,” I mean basically the perspective of a third-person video game, camera behind the main character, positioned over the shoulder and maintaining a constant distance as it follows the killer, who we later learn is named “Johnny,” as he walks through the forest on his murder mission.

I cannot express to you the amount of time we spend watching him walk through various forest environs. It’s just staggering. He definitely got his ten thousand steps. Is this a critique of Laura Mulvey's work on "the male gaze," and its blinkered worldview? By placing the gaze behind the typical slasher film's gaze, is he inviting us to reconsider and even reject that gaze? Is this boring-ass traipse through the forest a radical reimagining of what film could be, if we'd only step back and consider the wider world? I don't know, but the boredom I felt as a viewer was a whole new kind of masochistic experience in cinema, so bravo, I guess?

Now, Johnny never says anything, which is fine. Michael Meyers never said anything, Jason never said anything, and I think we all wish Freddy had shut the hell up from time to time. It’s totally cool to have a taciturn or mute murder bot. It makes them mysterious, and more dangerous. You don’t know what’s going on in their heads or what they’ll do next. It also makes it easier for the audience to place themselves into the perspective of the victims, because they generally talk to each other and express emotions and all that other crap that’s apparently important in maintaining healthy relationships.

But I digress. Making the decision to put our attention squarely on the back (literally) of this killer turns the film into a much more frustrating and boring experience than it should be. Aside from the plodding pace of watching Johnny walk through the forest (and given that he’s an undead monster, he doesn’t move all that quickly), being his constant companion means we never once get to experience a jump scare in the entire film. Not one. It’s like putting Hannah Waddingham into a movie and not letting her sing. Why would you handicap your film like that?!

But I digress again. There’s no surprises, no tension, no shock. There’s one sequence in particular, where a character is paralyzed, and then dismembered and decapitated by a diesel-powered log-splitting machine. On paper, that sounds like a terrifying death scene and the kind of stand-out moment that would help elevate a film to the top of the genre. In practice, however, it was one of the most boring, tedious moments of the entire movie. It took forever, it was captured in (as I recall) one long static shot, and even the character being killed didn’t really seem to give a shit about what was happening.

The filmmakers made another interesting choice by deciding to forego any kind of musical score. Think about John Carpenter’s iconic theme to Halloween, or the piercing strings of Psycho during (spoiler alert) Janet Leigh’s shower scene. Now erase them from their films. Why? Why would you handicap your film like that? Instead of a score helping to build tension, we’re left listening to the rustling of leaves and whatnot under Johnny’s feet.

Okay, so let’s talk about the victims. They’re just…meh. We don’t really get to know them at all, because we're following Johnny Stabsalot on his walkabout. Luckily for us, we can hear their conversations when Johnny is nearby, so we can sort of kind of glean a few bits of character and story, but I couldn’t tell you their names, other than I think one is Cody, maybe? They really just exist to go off on their own, one by one, and meet grisly ends.

Now, I’m about to say some nice things. Major spoilers ahead for this movie that you should not bother seeing…

This film features a final girl, Kris (I had to look that name up, BTW), who manages to survive the final showdown with Johnny. Throughout the film, Johnny has been trying to reclaim a gold necklace that was given to him (when he was alive) by his mother. In the opening sequence, one of the victims finds the necklace in the forest and takes it, which brings Johnny back to life and sends him on his murder quest. Kris winds up with the necklace, and after every single one of her friends has been killed by this guy, she finally decides to leave the necklace for him and run the fuck away. It is, quite literally, the first time anyone makes a reasonable decision in the entire film.

Once Kris leaves the necklace behind, the perspective switches to her. We follow as she runs, alone, through the darkened forest. It’s a parallel to how we followed Johnny, except she is shrieking, screaming, crying—you know, emoting. I was reminded of the ending sequences of both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, which featured their respective final girls running away from their tormentors and embracing insanity, respectively. Kris is injured, bleeding, and eventually picked up by a driver, credited simply as “The Woman,” and played by Lauren Taylor (AKA “Vickie” from Friday the 13th Part II).

What follows is mostly an extended monologue delivered by The Woman as she tries to keep Kris from passing out and dying from blood loss. The Woman tells a story about her brother, a forest ranger who investigated and tracked what appeared to be a rogue bear in these same woods, 30 years before. The bear killed everything in its path, and nearly killed her brother, but stopped its attack when it appeared that he had died from drowning. There’s an obvious implication that maybe it wasn’t a bear, maybe it was Johnny during a previous killapalooza? Or maybe it was a bear that was just acting out in a violent nature? The ranger never saw it, and it was never spotted by anyone else.

In a meta sense, we have one victim of a previous generation’s slasher (spoiler alert, Vickie didn’t make it to Friday the 13th Part III) saving the new generation’s final girl and imparting some hard-earned wisdom to her. It’s a passing of the baton from one IP to the next. And, if you read the origins of slasher films as a reaction to second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, then you could also read this ending as third-wave feminism sharing its strength with these kids today and their digital-first fourth wave feminism. It’s a warning that there are entrenched, relentless, zombie-like institutions out there waiting to put a steel log hook through the head of anyone who tries to break them down.

But, like, you’ve gotta really, really want to see that interpretation.

Yikes. I can’t believe I wrote more than 1500 words about this movie, which in my mind I will refer to as In a Boring Nature. Don’t go see it. I wouldn’t even bother streaming it. Go watch Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, or The Cabin in the Woods, or any of the first few Scream movies if you want an interesting deconstruction or meta-take on the genre.