In A Violent Nature (2024)

Remember the joke in Clerks II when a character dismisses The Lord Of The Rings trilogy by boiling it down to various scenes of people walking? That same dismissive criticism could be levelled at In A Violent Nature, the new horror film that has made a name for itself by aligning viewers more closely with the slasher villain at the heart of it.

Written and directed by Chris Nash, who has a number of shorts to his credit already (as well as make up credits in other features), this is the simple tale of a man walking through the woods and picking off some unsuspecting victims. The deadly events are triggered by a locket being moved, which motivates Johnny (Ry Barrett) to kill and kill again, at least until he can regain possession of the locket and go back to a temporary state of peaceful death again.

There's not too much to discuss here, in many ways. The cinematography is fine, the sound mix allows viewers to hear ongoing conversations that help to contextualise things while Johnny continues on his plodding journey (giving you snippets of moments that you'd expect to see from a different angle in any standard slasher movie), and the cast are all very disposable.

I know to credit Barrett as Johnny, and he deserves to be singled out for a physical performance that allows Johnny to feel deserving of being alongside the classic masked killers of the sub-genre (in terms of the presentation of him, if nothing else). Elsewhere, however, I had to be reminded of the other cast members, and cannot say that many of them stand out from the crowd. Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, and everyone else involved do what they're asked to do, although that isn't much. They are fodder, and I will be very surprised if anyone watches this film with their eye on any one character they hope to see make it to the end credits.

A slasher movie is often rated based on how well the kills are executed though, no pun intended, and this is where In A Violent Nature wins some big bonus points. There are some great kills in this, and one of them is quite possibly the best I've ever seen. They're brutal and nasty, but shown in a way that showcases the special effects without feeling as lascivious and troublesome as the kind of extended sequences we recently saw in the Terrifier movies, to grab for the first example that springs to mind. If Nash had worked more on the rest of the scenes surrounding the kills, especially an interminable final sequence that ends the film with a whimper instead of any climactic scream, then this could have been a modern classic. Sadly, he doesn't do that, and that ending is hard to forgive.

I enjoyed a lot of this, and was willing it to completely win me over, but it doesn't quite get enough right. If you're presenting a slasher movie with a lot of "behind the scenes" moments that we don't usually see, you need to do it with more wit, inventiveness, and passion. This is an interesting exercise, but it all too often feels like it is most interested in being exactly that.

5/10

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