Chris Nash's innovative spin on a horror staple boasts an excellent set-up, but falls flat in its final act.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a group of sexy teens in a forest must be in want of a menacing killer to stalk them. In his intriguing feature debut In A Violent Nature, filmmaker Chris Nash riffs on this right from the jump, as a hulking silent menace is inadvertently resurrected in a remote area of woodland after a jock pockets a locket hanging under an abandoned fire tower. He proceeds to determinedly trudge through the idyllic forest, a man possessed, returning to the home he once shared with his loving mother, who gave him the necklace which has now been stolen – and we watch over his shoulder, hypnotised by the sound of heavy feet thudding against the ground.
There’s certainly a novelty to Nash’s naturalistic set-up, inspired by the work of Terence Malick and Gus Van Sant, which sees its minimal budget as a feature rather than a bug and positions the audience to share the killer’s POV rather than the victims’. Filmed in the picturesque wilderness of rural Ontario with a skeleton cast and crew, the tension of what’s lurking just beyond the treeline is undercut by the gentle rustle of trees in the breeze and birds singing happily in the summer sun. The interchangeable sexy teens do what interchangeable sexy teens do, sharing beers by the campfire and stripping off to swim in the lake. And the menacing killer does what a menacing killer does: he stalks and kills them, sometimes in particularly creative fashion. There’s even the prerequisite spooky origin story, delivered by one of the kids – from this, we learn “Johnny” was an intellectually disabled young man killed by some local boys in a practical joke gone wrong. His unsettled spirit has returned to enact revenge before, and the locket haphazardly left beneath the tower was the only thing keeping him in the ground.
Yet there’s something underwhelming about Johnny’s ramshackle rampage, which is underpinned by an animal urge to kill, all but explained in a late monologue by a side character. While there can be something terrifying about a thinly sketched villain – such as Jason in the original Friday the Thirteenth or Michael Myers in Halloween – here we are given no reason to care either way who lives or dies, instead baring witness to the slaughter with no investment in what happens. The riff on classic horror tropes is novel, but not enough to sustain a 94-minute feature, particularly when the hammy dialogue and acting pushes up against Pierce Derks’ crisp, reverent cinematography, displaying the Canadian wilderness in all its glory. The film boasts excellent technical work throughout, notably in the sound design (all the more prominent as In A Violent Nature forgoes a traditional score) and the special effects (there are impressive two gory setpieces, though more would have been quite welcome to compensate for the sedate pace and hackneyed acting).
And kudos to Ry Barrett, who stomps through the forest with as much panache as a man can while wearing a vision-obscuring Vajen Bader smoke protector. He’s saved from the film’s deliberately bad dialogue by virtue of being a silent character, and the decision to outfit him in a spooky vintage fire helmet gives the film a piece of ready-made iconic imagery. The film’s final scene is also a chilling subversion of normal expectations for the climax of a campground slasher, but the lacklustre 90 minutes that precede it mean that by the time we trudge to the forest’s boundaries, there’s little reason to care who comes out of the blood bath on top.
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Published 8 Jul 2024
Lot of festival hype for this one...
Starts off strong but quickly becomes a bit meandering.
Promising but a little short of excellence.
By Anton Bitel
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The likes of Raw, The Transfiguration and others speak directly to self-aware, socially-conscious teens.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
